Build-it-yourself disaster planning

InTERRAgate is a new, online database for disaster management non-governmental organizations (NGO's), humanitarian agencies and search-and-rescue teams responding to natural disasters.

Contingency planners are invited to contribute.

Like Wikipedia and other online BIY ("build-it-yourselves") collaborations and "mash-ups," InTERRAgate invites interested parties to submit information, including country facts, maps and images, emergency contacts and first responder information (for example, visas and inoculations data).

%IMAGE=InTERRAgate_Asia_Map.jpg% The blueprint: To prepare international response teams for likely disasters, to identify the most vulnerable countries and their most likely anticipated hazards, and to have worldwide online access to information about the host country.

Asia is home to nations in the InTERRAgate database most vulnerable to natural disasters, including Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippine Islands.

InTERRAgate is a joint project of the U.K.'s Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre and U.K. charity Search and Rescue Assistance in Disasters (SARAID). Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre is sponsored by reinsurance intermediaries and risk advisory consultants Benfield Group, and University College London (UCL).