Let's Talk about .. Disaster Organizations

In the world, there are many organizations doing the informing, warning, or other duties related to the disaster. Thank Assoc.Prof.Dr. Anawat Suppasri who provided me many information about them. I summarized them in order to collect as a list to be used in the future. One point that we can see is that most of them were established by the trigger of some event (disasters).

Organizations related to disaster warning system

1. Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC)
• Establisher: US NOAA's National Weather Service, 1949
• Trigger: 1946 Aleutian Earthquake and Tsunami
• Location: Hawaii, USA
• Main duty: Coast and Geodetic Survey (CGS)
2. International Tsunami Information Center (ITIC)
• Establisher: UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), 1965
• Trigger: 1960 Chilean Earthquake and Tsunami
• Location: Hawaii, USA
3. Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Pacific Tsunami Warning System (ICG/PTWS) (previously known as International Coordination Group for the Tsunami Warning System in the Pacific (ICG/ITSU))
• Establisher: UNESCO IOC, 1968
• Location: 
• Main duty: Warning for remote tsunamis occurring in the Pacific Ocean
4. National Data Buoy Center (NDBC)
• Establisher: US Coast Guard Home, 1967 (currently belong to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA))
• Location: Mississippi, USA
• Main duty: Providing data from buoys and Coastal Marine Automated Network (C-MAN)
5. Northwest Pacific Tsunami Advisory Center (NWPTAC)
• Establisher: Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), 2005
• Location: Tokyo, Japan
• Main duty: Providing northwestern Pacific tsunami information
6. Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (ICG/IOTWS)
• Establisher: Indian Ocean nations, UNESCO IOC, others
• Trigger: 2004 Great Indian Ocean Tsunami
• Location: Perth, Australia
• Main duty: Studying plan to construct Indian Ocean tsunami warning system

Ref.

[1] Murata, S., Imamura, F., & Katoh, K., Kawata, Y., Takahashi, S., & Takayama, T. (2011). Tsunami: to survive from tsunami (Vol. 32) (2nd ed.). Singapore: World Scientific Publishing.

Let's Talk about .. GLIDE

As same as other types of data, primary key is necessary to identify the unique item or instance. For the area of disaster, each disaster is also assigned unique identifier, so-called "GLIDE". GLIDE = GLobal unique disaster IDEntifier.

The format of GLIDE is AA-BBBB-CCCCCC-DDD-[EEE]; while AA is "Hazard Code", BBBB is "Year", CCCCCC is "Serial Number", DDD is "ISO Country Code", and [EEE] is "Optional State/Province Code"[1].

For example, 2011 Thailand Floods has GLIDE as "FL-2011-000135-THA".

GLIDE has been used proposed by Asian Disaster Reduction Center (ADRC). For more information you can find from http://glidenumber.net

Ref.
[1] Asian Disaster Reduction Center. (2005). GLIDE (GLobal unique disaster IDEntifier). In T. Jeggle (Ed.) Know Risk. (p. 80) Leicester: Tudor Rose.