A new early warning and hazard monitoring system, ThaiAWARE, will provide advanced decision support capabilities to Thailand’s disaster managers, protecting the country’s 70 million residents from natural disasters.
The Thailand Government and Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) have operationalised this system, launched in a virtual ceremony on December 15, 2021. It was the Pacific Disaster Center’s first customised, remote deployment of DisasterAWARE in Asia and only the second worldwide.
Thailand is prone to natural disasters, such as floods, droughts and tropical storms.The country suffered an economic loss of $46,055,161 due to natural disasters from 2009 to 2018.
The National Disaster Relief Centre has indicated that flood disasters in Thailand between 1989 and 2018 caused more than B160.8 billion ($5.1 billion) damage to the economy. The 2011 floods accrued economic damage of more than B23 billion ($0.7 billion) alone.
Thailand’s Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department (DDPM) reported that flooding affected 229,220 households across 6,827 villages in 193 districts of 31 provinces as of September 30, 2021.
Source: downtoearth.org
