A disproportionate number of the world’s natural disasters occur in the Asia-Pacific region. The Center for Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance (CFE-DMHA) saw that organizations training first responders in this region lacked coordination amongst themselves and that donor funding wasn’t allocated strategically, leading to suboptimal responses during emergencies.

CFE-DMHA approached Ushahidi to help them create a solution to this problem: a platform which would aggregate and transparently map all the disaster management training events in the Asia-Pacific region.

Ushahidi built the Crisis Preparedness platform using the Crowdmap API’s mapping capabilities, and designed it with extreme ease-of-use in mind. We also extensively tested the site to ensure that it was robust and reliable.

Anyone can submit details of disaster management training events through a form on the platform, and the site’s homepage map displays all the submitted events. Discovery and analysis is made easier by filtering tools which allow users to sort events by timeframe, event type, and disaster type.

The Crisis Preparedness platform allows donors to identify funding gaps, and helps training organizations to collaborate more effectively. However, one of the most important goals of the platform is to help the first responders actually attending the events. By fostering ties and strengthening their community, the platform ultimately increases the effectiveness and speed of their response when disasters occur.