This week the Disaster Analytics for Society Lab team was in Nepal for the 3rd workshop on the Informatics for Equitable Recovery (IER) project. One purpose of our study is to understand the complexities of disaster impact and the process of recovery, identify key obstacles to recovery, and try to define what disaster recovery even…
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On the 26-27th of August 2019, David, Susanna Jenkins, and I (Yolanda) hosted the Counterfactual Black Swans Workshop, dedicated to applying downward counterfactual thought in risk analysis. This builds directly on my work as a post-doc this past year (read more about my project here). Twenty-eight participants from a total of six countries joined us…
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Welcome to the new site for the Disaster Analytics for Society Lab (DASL) in NTU! We’ll be using this as a space to share our work — including publications, blog posts, linking to datasets, and more. Look forward to more posts to come!
Monday morning, July 15, 2019, the first full day of the 44th Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop: not quite knowing what to expect, we (Sabine Loos and Yolanda Lin) were skeptical about the first item on the agenda for the day. It looked as though a full hour and a half was blocked…
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With all the hype since the beginning of 2019 around the #10yearchallenge, I gave an optional assignment to my students in the Data Science in Environmental Earth Systems Science (EESS) course (ES7023) at Nanyang Technological University, to conduct a #10YearsOfEarth challenge (learn more about the Asian School of the Environment at NTU). They compiled some…
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Updating a post I had written 2 years ago. Still relevant. Today marks the 9th year since the Southern part of Haiti was shook by a devastating 7.0M earthquake. The earthquake claimed tens of thousands of lives (estimates range from 100,000-316,000), rendered millions homeless and threw the country in tremendous chaos. I remember exactly where…
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By Sabine Loos About a month ago, I was standing in front of a small conference room presenting to a group of Nepali civic tech enthusiasts about my professional journey to Kathmandu Living Labs (KLL). I received many thoughtful questions at the end of my presentation, but I’ve been reflecting on my answer to one specific…
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Last month I spent a week in Nepal setting up an exciting project with collaborators at Kathmandu Living Labs. The project is funded through a “Collaborative Data Innovations for Sustainable Development” award by the World Bank and Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. Our proposal focused on better understanding the ways in which disaster impact…
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Before the Great San Francisco Bay Area Earthquake Today is the 112th anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, an event that changed virtually every aspect of the city. For decades following, people talked about the time before the earthquake and the time after it. It was the most important reference for the entire history…
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There is no such thing as a natural disaster, only natural hazard. That’s because the impact of hurricanes, earthquakes and other hazards is determined not by the size and intensity of such events, but by the extent to witch our built environment is exposed and vulnerable to them. What does it mean when it comes…
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