DESINVENTAR is a global initiative promoted by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) aimed at creating data catalogues according to a shared, detailed and localized methodology, containing information on human losses and on economic and physical damage caused by natural disasters.
Among the goals, the creation of national databases where they do not exist, shared through the open source platform desinventar.net allows to compare the data provided by different nations and to create a reference point for further developments. The database on disaster losses is particularly important as it allows to identify risk vulnerable locations.
DESINVENTAR is useful both to validate the outcomes of risk reduction models and to prepare measures for disaster impact reduction and mitigation. DESINVENTAR is also functional in allocating funds and compensation for such events.
In DESINVENTAR II, CIMA Research Foundation has contributed to disseminate the system in the Balkans, the Caribbean and Belarus. In the Caribbean area findings have allowed to find a relation between difficulties in data collection and the poor resources that National Civil Protections Departments have available.
Training activities have been carried out through workshops and study activities to identify the main and most useful indicators to describe the actual impact of disasters. In Belarus, where a methodology and a database for disaster recovery were already in place, an alignment activity has been carried out, following international guidelines.