Transcript Geocoding African Disasters

Geocoding African
Disasters
Jesse Brinkman
Mentor: Pam Cowher
Project Overview

Data Prep
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Gather Data
Organize Data
Geocode the Data
Analysis
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What effect do El Nino/La Nina years have on
droughts in Africa?
What role do development indicators play in the
severity of disasters?
What is Geocoding?
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Geocoding is a way to
give something a
reference point on a map.
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Address
Latitude/Longitude
Other grid systems
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Pacific Disaster Center
1305 N Holopono St # 2
Kihei, HI 96753
Gather the Data
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Obtain the data from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of
Disasters’ (CRED) Emergency Events Database (EMDAT)
Organize the Data
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Using the locations provided by EMDAT
assign latitude and longitude information to
each disaster.
Re-format the data to be easily inserted into
the GIS software.
Geocode the Data
Observations/Trends
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
1,580 Disasters recorded from 1981-2007
Epidemics and Floods account for 71%
 585 and 532 respectively
33.67%
9.56%
Epidemic
Flood
8.92%
Drought
Wind Storm
Insect Infestation
Earthquake
Slides
3.73%
2.53%
1.39%
1.27%
0.76%
0.63%
0.32%
0.19%
37.03%
Wild Fire
Volcano
Extreme Temperature
Wave/Surge
Complex
Observations/Trends cont.
Increase in disasters in recent years
Total Disasters by Year
# of disasters
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
19
80
19
81
19
82
19
83
19
84
19
85
19
86
19
87
19
88
19
89
19
90
19
91
19
92
19
93
19
94
19
95
19
96
19
97
19
98
19
99
20
00
20
01
20
02
20
03
20
04
20
05
20
06
20
07
20
08
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2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
Flood
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
1989
1988
1987
1986
1985
1984
1983
1982
1981
1980
Floods and Epidemics by Year
Epidemic
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Disaster Density 1981 - 1990
Disaster Density 1991 - 2000
Total Deaths by Year 1988 - 2007
# of Deaths
18,000
16,000
14,000
12,000
10,000
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Analysis
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What effects do El Nino/La Nina years have
on droughts in Africa?
What role do development indicators play in
the loss of life associated with disasters?
El Nino/La Nina
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Hypothesis: There are more droughts during
El Nino years, and less during La Nina years.
Methods:
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
Gather the list of years that El Nino/La Nina
occurred.
Look for an increase in drought occurrence.
# of Deaths by Disaster
# of Deaths
Drought
600,000
500,000
Epidemic
Flood
Earthquake
Wind Storm
Volcano
Slides
Wave/Surge
Extreme Temperature
100,000
Wild Fire
200,000
Complex Disaster
300,000
Insect Infestation
400,000
0
Insect
Infestation
Wild Fire
Wave/Surge
Volcano
Earthquake
Epidemic
Conclusions
No apparent correlation between # of droughts and El Nino/La Nina years
Sensitivity to Disasters
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Hypothesis: Indicators such as infant
mortality, literacy, and government corruption
contribute to the amount of deaths per
disaster.
Methods:
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Take the average infant mortality, literacy,
corruption perception, water stress, digital access,
and human development rates.
Compare with average death/disaster
Conclusions
There is no strong correlation between the two.
Sensitivity Rate vs Avg Death
250
200
Average Killed
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150
100
50
0
0.00
0.10
0.20
0.30
0.40
0.50
0.60
Sensitivity Rate
0.70
0.80
0.90
R2 = 0.2153
1.00
Future Work Possibilities
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Do specific regional analysis on the El Nino/La Nina
years, as opposed to Africa as a whole.
Improve the sensitivity analysis/map
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Better Scale
Disaster by type
 Individual factors which may affect particular disaster types.
Explain the increase in disasters.
Acknowledgements
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Pam Cowher
Colin Lindeman
Rich Nezelek
Centre for Research on the
Epidemiology of Disasters
(CRED)
Emergency Events
Database (EMDAT)
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Lani LeBron
Lisa Hunter
Lynne Raschke
Scott Seagroves
The Akamai Internship Program is
funded by the Center for Adaptive
optics through it’s National Science
Foundation Science and Technology
Center grant (#AST-987683) and by
grants to the Akamai Workforce
Initiative from the National Science
Foundation and Air Force Office of
Scientific Research (both administered
by NSF, #AST-0710699) and from the
University of Hawaii