The Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System provides near real-time alerts about natural disasters around the world and tools to facilitate response coordination, including media monitoring, map catalogues and Virtual On-Site Operations Coordination Centre.

GDACS sources for event information

The list of events published by GDACS is compiled from information provided by GDACS partners or from public information syndicated on the Internet.

Automatic event collection by the Asgard system (JRC)

Earthquakes can be detected within minutes through a global network of seismic detectors. Many seismological institutes in the world maintain such sensors and share their information to allow for a rapid and automatic determination of earthquake characteristics by computation centres. In turn, these data are made public using telecommunication or the Internet.

The GDACS earthquake impact model is built on this seismological infrastructure. Without it, GDACS would not be able to obtain rapid estimations of location, magnitude and depth of earthquakes. In order to ensure robust information gathering, GDACS collects information from various sources.

GDACS collects information every 5 minutes from the following sources:

• United States Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC): http://neic.usgs.gov/.
  • http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/catalogs/eqs7day-M2.5.xml
• European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC): http://www.emsc-csem.org/.
  • Source page: http://www.emsc-csem.org/index.php?page=current&sub=list
  • http://www.gdacs.org/xml/emsc.xml
• GEOFON Programme of the GFZ Potsdam: http://www.gfz-potsdam.de/geofon/.
  • http://geofon.gfz-potsdam.de/db/eqinfo.php?fmt=rss
• Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA): http://www.jma.go.jp/
  • Source page: http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/quake_local_index.html
  • http://www.gdacs.org/xml/jma.xml

Tropical cyclones are monitored continuously by national and international meteorological organisations (see World Meteorological Organisation). Official data is released by Regional Specialized Meteorological Centers. However, for aggregated data on a global level other sources are available.

GDACS collects information every 10 minutes from the following sources:

• Pacific Disaster Center: http://www.pdc.org

• Hawaii University, IFA SOLAR: http://www.solar.ifa.hawaii.edu/Tropical/tropical.html.

On 1 July 2008, GDACS changed the source for volcano information. Now, GDACS list volcanic activity based on the weekly bulletins of the Global Volcanism Program.

• Global Volcanism Program: http://www.volcano.si.edu/ 
  • http://www.volcano.si.edu/news/WeeklyVolcanoRSS.xml  (cached at http://www.gdacs.org/xml/rssvo_si.xml)
  • http://www.volcano.si.edu/reports/usgs/

The Weekly Volcanic Activity Report is a cooperative project between the Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Program and the US Geological Survey's Volcano Hazards Program. Updated by 2300 UTC every Wednesday, these notices are preliminary and subject to change as events are studied in more detail. This is not a comprehensive list of eruptions during the week, but rather a summary of activity that meet selected criteria. Carefully reviewed, detailed reports are published monthly in the Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network. The World Organization of Volcano Observatories (WOVO) website (http://www.wovo.org/) lists the regional volcano observatories that have the most authoritative data for many of these events.

Floods are monitored on a global basis by the Dartmouth Flood Observatory (DFO). GDACS/JRC has a partnership with DFO to provide updated lists of ongoing floods in the world. Furthermore, JRC is collaborating with DFO on a flood detection system using satellite imagery.

• Dartmouth Flood Observatory: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~floods
  • converted to RSS
  • http://www.dartmouth.edu/~floods/Archives/2007sum.htm

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