IRMA · Integrated Risk Management for Africa

Disaster risk reduction policies and institutional mechanism exist at various degrees of completeness in the African countries part of the consortium. Their effectiveness is however limited when having to deal with major disasters and complex emergencies. Risk management is often limited to specific hazard monitoring with limited or no consideration of the vulnerability of the area at risk neither to the systemic nature and possible domino effect between risks of different nature. It is the vulnerability of the population and of the infrastructure at risk that may transform a hazard into a major disaster. <br/><br/>The objective of IRMA is to demonstrate the effectiveness of ICT applications to deal with major disasters and the possibly resulting humanitarian crisis by integrating the whole disaster management chain from assessment to recovery. This will be realized by the integration of existing tools adapted to the regional specificities with new developments addressing the issue of multiple combined vulnerabilities. The general architecture of IRMA is system of systems" based drawing from the results of the WIN and ORCHESTRA Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), it will ensure interoperability with INSPIRE and the merging UNSDI with the view to benefit from both EU and UN current and future services."