The GIScience group cordially invites everybody interested to our next open GIScience colloquium talk about:
- Supporting the most vulnerable people before the disaster strikes – International Disaster Risk Reduction within the German Red Cross
- Speakers are Stefanie Lux and Stefan Scholz from the German Red Cross (GRC, Generalsekretariat Berlin, International Coordination).
- Monday 21.01.2019, 14:15 pm
- Institute of Geography, Heidelberg University, INF 348, Lecture Hall 015 (ground floor)
The German Red Cross (GRC) is part of the worldwide Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement with its presently 191 recognized National Red Cross or Red Crescent Societies. A major focus of the GRC’s international cooperation is on supporting the most vulnerable people around the world in addressing the impacts of natural hazards like tsunamis or floods. The presentation is going to give insights into approaches and activities in the area of Disaster Risk Reduction. Nevertheless it is also supposed to trigger a dialogue about how humanitarian organizations like GRC could strengthen their work through the use and the integration of Geographic Information Systems.
Last year the German Red Cross and GIScience HD/HeiGIT signed a Memorandum of Understanding to strengthen the strategic partnership to conduct joint activities related to research as well as development of GIS technologies, skills, workflows and communities. Over the past GIScience/HeiGIT have already supported the GRC through presentations, e.g. at the Dialogue Platform German Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (“Fachtagung Katastrophenvorsorge), and the organization of mapathon events. Furthermore, the organizations have already published a joint journal paper about Missing Maps, also involving the British Red Cross. HeiGIT is happy to share and extend the tools and services related to humanitarian activities such as (openrouteservice for disaster management, ohsome analytics for disaster management, MapSwipe Analytics, deepVGI etc.) in order to improve the work on disaster risk reduction together with the Red Cross.
Feel most welcome to join the event!
Scholz, S.; Knight, P.; Eckle, M.; Marx, S.; Zipf, A. (2018): Volunteered Geographic Information for Disaster Risk Reduction—The Missing Maps Approach and Its Potential within the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Remote Sensing 2018, 10(8), 1239, doi: 10.3390/rs10081239.