Scholarly record

NATURAL RISK AND RESILIENCE - HOW THE NATIONAL GEO-INFORMATION CENTER IS ASSESSING AND COMMUNICATING THEM

Nikolay Miloshev, Petya Trifonova

Abstract

Present paper is a brief story about Bulgarian efforts to integrate data, products and services in Bulgaria into a newly established scientific infrastructure named a National Geoinfomation Center (NGIC) and its efforts to assess and communicate the information about natural hazards and risks to the general public. We started two years ago with the ambitious goal of uniting our observations and research in the area of monitoring and investigation of the Earth’s interior and the near-Earth space. The instrumental units include unique facilities, such as seismic, accelerometric, geodetic, meteorological and oceanographic stations, scientific equipment in several laboratories (geotechnical, paleo magnetic, chemical, biological) and computer systems for innovative calculations and data processing. We have many users, which are research organizations and universities, national and regional authorities, and of course the general public. We are developing a national portal with nice, easy and highly informative plots of different parameters starting from earthquakes, pollution and many others (www.ngic.bg). But, we realized that we must be proactive and to push public to learn about natural hazards and to be more demanding of themselves and the surrounding world. The territory of Bulgaria is located in an area with high seismicity and quite reasonably this is one of the major natural hazards threatening the population and the economy. Monitoring the Earth's environment, including the impact of the Sun on life on Earth affects people through the magnetic field and UV radiation and as is known air quality has become an important issue of people's lives, especially in big cities. In this paper are described data production and service development for earthquakes, UV radiation, geomagnetic disturbances and air quality provided by the National Geoinformation center.

Publication details

Back to publication list