El Morjani Zine El Abidine, Ebener Steeve, Boos John, Abdel Ghaffar Eman, Musani Altaf
Emergency Preparedness & Humanitarian Action, World Health Organization Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, Nasr City, Cairo, Egypt.
Int J Health Geogr. 2007 Mar 7;6:8. doi: 10.1186/1476-072X-6-8.
Reducing the potential for large scale loss of life, large numbers of casualties, and widespread displacement of populations that can result from natural disasters is a difficult challenge for the individuals, communities and governments that need to respond to such events. While it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to predict the occurrence of most natural hazards; it is possible to take action before emergency events happen to plan for their occurrence when possible and to mitigate their potential effects. In this context, an Atlas of Disaster Risk is under development for the 21 Member States that constitute the World Health Organization's (WHO) Eastern Mediterranean (EM) Region and the West Bank and Gaza Strip territory.
This paper describes the Geographic Information System (GIS) based methods that have been used in order to create the first volume of the Atlas which looks at the spatial distribution of 5 natural hazards (flood, landslide, wind speed, heat and seismic hazard). It also presents the results obtained through the application of these methods on a set of countries part of the EM Region before illustrating how this type of information can be aggregated for decision making.
The methods presented in this paper aim at providing a new set of tools for GIS practitioners to refine their analytical capabilities when examining natural hazards, and at the same time allowing users to create more specific and meaningful local analyses. The maps resulting from the application of these methods provides decision makers with information to strengthen their disaster management capacity. It also represents the basis for the reflection that needs to take place regarding populations' vulnerability towards natural hazards from a health perspective.
减少自然灾害可能导致的大规模生命损失、大量人员伤亡和广泛的人口流离失所，对于需要应对此类事件的个人、社区和政府而言是一项艰巨挑战。虽然预测大多数自然灾害的发生极其困难，甚至几乎不可能；但在紧急事件发生前采取行动，尽可能为其发生做好规划并减轻其潜在影响却是可行的。在此背景下，正在为构成世界卫生组织（WHO）东地中海（EM）区域的21个成员国以及约旦河西岸和加沙地带编制一本《灾害风险地图集》。
本文描述了基于地理信息系统（GIS）的方法，这些方法用于编制《地图集》的第一卷，该卷审视了5种自然灾害（洪水、山体滑坡、风速、高温和地震灾害）的空间分布。在说明如何汇总此类信息以供决策之前，还展示了通过将这些方法应用于EM区域的一组国家所获得的结果。
本文介绍的方法旨在为GIS从业者提供一套新工具，以提升他们在研究自然灾害时的分析能力，同时让用户能够开展更具体且有意义的本地分析。应用这些方法生成的地图为决策者提供了信息，以增强他们的灾害管理能力。它还代表了从健康角度对人群面对自然灾害的脆弱性进行反思的基础。
