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Dear readers,

It is indeed a great pleasure to offer you this new" issue of the Asian Disaster Management News. We have made an attempt to develop a fonnat that will serve the needs of the disaster management community in a better way. The current issue discusses Networking as the central theme. The subsequent issues will take up Reconstruction and Community Participation; Hazard Analysis; and Disasters and Women as the central themes. The upcoming issues will have space for project updates (from the grassroots, national or regional levels), experiences, opinions, lessons learned, letters to the editor etc.

We welcome you to contribute to this newsletter about your work, experiences and views on specific issues. We will do our best to publish your contributions within the broad framework of this letter. Please also let us know your reactions to this "new" issue.

At ADPC, we look forward to hearing from you. Please feel free to contact us with any queries regarding this publication.

Kamal Kishore

Information Officer, ADPC

Tel (66 2) 5245378; Fax (66 2) 5245360

Email : kamal@ait.ac.th

FROM THE ADPC WEBMASTER

Hello readers! This is ADPC's Webmaster - just thinking aloud!

At ADPC, we are busy refurbishing our Web-page. Being housed in a premier technical institution, we are in an advantageous position in that we have the technical expertise, equipment and other resources to draw upon for Internet applications. Very soon we will have established a system to continuously upgrade our Web-page. We believe that our presence on the Web could acquire much more significance if we could linkup with other disaster organizations from Asia and the Pacific and gradually develop a regional information network. However, at the moment, most disaster organizations either do not have Internet access at all or have only e-mail facility. But the way information technology is modernizing in this region, it seems that within a matter of few years many organizations in the region will have full Internet access,

But what do we do till then?

Here is an idea - ADPC offers to play the lead role! We construct Web-pages for the organizations in the region and give them space on our Webserver.

How do we do till that?

We consult with each of the interested organizations and decide a format for their page. They give us the information in this format and we construct their Web-page. Periodically (say every three months), they send us information updates and we take care of uploading it on the Net. Later, when they have full Internet access and- perhaps even a web-server of their own (or an easily accessible server in their region), we help them shift their page to the new site. And for all this, we charge them a nominal fee to cover our professional costs and rent for space on the ADPC server.

Benefits?

As a regional network, we don't lose time due to lack of Internet access. Web-presence will better expose the disaster organizations in the region to international agencies and donors both within and outside the region. They become an active part of the global disaster management information net- work. A start up at one central place (ADPC) will help minimize the duplication of work and identify critical information gaps. It will help set a broad direction for the information network. As a result, each organization, in addition to talking about its own work, contributes meaningfully to the regional information network. At a later stage, we could have password protected sites for information sharing among specialized professionals or we could also initiate Internet conferencing.

Possibilities are exciting! Any takers? Write your reactions and have a dialogue with us!