Loss Database Architecture for Disaster Risk Management

The recent communication from the European Commission ‘Strengthening EU disaster management: rescEU — Solidarity with responsibility’ (COM(2017) 773 final) calls ‘Member States and Commission to promote more systematic collection and dissemination of loss data, to enhance the collection of loss data and make use of loss data for optimised prevention and climate adaptation planning’.

Considering that every European country has its own loss database(s), the challenge is to put together different hazards, standards and methodologies in order to help in sharing cross-institutional data, in reporting to the different frameworks, in being compliant with the directives and in providing sound input for the national risk assessment as required by the EU Civil Protection Mechanism.

This report is based on an accurate analysis of several databases developed following a diversified number of purposes to collect, record and aggregate information regarding losses occurred after a shock triggered by different hazards, and proposes a common structure of a generic database able to accommodate and properly record the required particularities of a vast variety of events triggered by any kind of hazard.