Project

Low-cost Disaster & Emergency Services for Communities At Risk (LODESTAR)

LODESTAR brings together what experts, citizens and city authorities know about disaster management in learning workshops, so we can better forecast extreme situations and issue early warnings. Citizens are at the heart of this project, bringing their insights and knowledge to improve the forecasting models and applications.

LODESTAR brings together experts, citizens and city authorities knowledge about disaster management to can better forecast extreme situations and issue early warnings. Based on state-of-the-art satellite information and artificial intelligence, LODESTAR will design a ‘dashboard’ (a mobile phone application and a web interface) for disasters, with easy-to-follow instructions, to reduce the impacts of multi-hazards (floods and periods of droughts) on citizens. The consortium will implement and pilot the approach in different cities and regions of India and the Netherlands that may see floods (from rivers or rainfall) and dry spells.

The critical challenges to disaster management in several countries, even for those having an accurate and timely EWS, are having limitations in translating warnings into practical local actions due to a lack of coordination, interaction, and collective action amongst the various institutions, thereby restricting the speed of information dissemination and access. Socio-political and cultural aspects strongly impact the effectiveness of the EWS, including cultural beliefs and practices, trust, and credibility of the modern EWS over traditional, fatalism, gender roles and responsibilities, etc. Addressing the social and cultural factors requires a comprehensive approach that involves community engagement, awareness campaigns tailored to local contexts, capacity building, and integration of local knowledge and practices into EWS. Hence, a robust forecasting and early warning service for extreme compound events (floods and droughts) that is sensitive to the socio-cultural aspects of the urban citizens is the need of the hour.

LODESTAR (guiding polestar for ships, resonating with project’s vision) aims to co-create a low-cost, multi-hazard early warning system (MH-EWS) in collaboration with citizens, academics, disaster professionals, industry, and (national and local) policy actors.