First up – thank you to all those (nearly 20,000 of you!) who have accessed various EPC Insight Team products, since we started the project 10 months ago. We hope our new and much improved website has made our stuff more visible and easier to get to.
One of the small (but welcome) surprises has been the popularity of the Disaster Database. At the outset, we said that it was a trial, to see if it would be of any use to you. Turns out it is one of our most popular products. So, we are going to improve it and are investing in giving it a whole new look and utility. It should be ready for re-launch early next year.
You’ll see a much-improved global disaster map with much more interactive functionality and better organisation. From the map you will be able to dive into the detail of each disaster and find links to all sorts of resources – including facts, videos, report references, reportage and the like.
With the old system we hit a capacity wall at about 400 disasters. With the new system we will be able to start adding more disasters to the database and expanding the content behind existing ones. This will become a regular line of work for our Resilience Knowledge Co-ordinator. A bit like the proverbial painting of the Forth Bridge, it’s a job that will never be finished. But we can say that it will continue to expand and become even more useful.
Look out for the notification; we will let you know when it’s ready for re-launch.
Happy Christmas and New Year to you all.