[Partner Challenge] AWS Disaster Response Hackathon

After a disaster, those responding and planning the recovery must determine how to prioritize limited resources to rebuild damaged infrastructure and meet critical gaps. Across Asia and throughout the world, this is often a manual process of collating field reports, making educated guesses, and extrapolating data that takes time to consolidate and reach decision makers. This can delay recovery efforts by responding organizations such as governments, nonprofits, and international organizations, and may decrease the effectiveness of the response.

Having the ability to quickly understand the extent of damage to critical infrastructure after a disaster enables those responding to better understand the impact on affected communities, and to steer resources to the places where they are most needed.

Post-disaster, ADB supports its developing member countries to assess damage and loss and quantify recovery needs over the short, medium, and long term. As governments lead the post-disaster needs assessment and recovery planning process, partners like ADB can provide sector specific expertise, including on roads, agriculture, health and education, to inform and contribute finance to the recovery. The quality of post-disaster assessments and recovery plans are determined by the accuracy of data.