Lesson Learned Center for Disaster Prevention and Management

Abstract

The aim of this work is to develop a Lesson Learned Center (LLC) to help the government agency preserve the valuable first-hand experiences gained from each disaster. This system can provide critical and timely information during or just before a disaster to those who need the information, such as decision-makers, engineers and local leaders in potential disaster areas. The LLC can also provide ideal teaching material to train students or young engineers. To achieve this aim, three major tasks were included in the development of the LLC: (1) data collection, (2) data organization, and (3) system implementation. We focused on the serious disasters in Taiwan over the past 15 years, which includes 25 floods, 3 droughts and 8 other events. For each disaster, we collected weather information, causes of the disaster, details of the disaster response, newss reports, and other critical information related to the disasters. We also interviewed the officers, engineers and residents affected by the disaster to study the impact of the disasters from varied observation angles. We then organized the information using templates developed in this research. The templates help to ensure the completeness of reports and also help to organize the information well. The final step was the implementation of the LLC system. To maximize the portability of the system, we adopted the HTML5 standard, a standard protocol commonly used throughout the Internet. We modularized the contents and develop a flexible layout. For each disaster, we provide a default layout, which helps users obtain an overall picture of the disaster. They can change the layout interactively and can easily browse through the detailed content. The LLC system is nearly complete. We plan to test the system in the Water Resources Agency of Taiwan to verify its us1ability.