Each topic below explains the evidence, the business problem it creates, how GLOBEIR solves it, the benefits to your organisation, and how your data stays private and secure.
1. Hazard, Risk and Vulnerability Mapping
Risk mapping answers a simple question with a lot of data behind it: what is exposed to which hazard, and how badly? India already has strong national hazard layers. NRSC has prepared flood hazard zonation atlases from historic satellite flood maps; the Bihar atlas used 13 years of data, was peer reviewed by an NDMA committee including CWC, IMD and the Bihar SDMA, and was validated on the ground by district administrations [8]. NRSC's national Flood Affected Area Atlas, built from 25 years of flood maps (1998 to 2022), estimates about 15.75 million hectares of flood-affected area across 435 districts, with Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Assam together accounting for 60 per cent [7].
For landslides, GSI has completed 1:50,000 susceptibility mapping of about 4.3 lakh sq km of hilly terrain in parts of 19 states and UTs, has gathered information on 91,000 historical landslides and has field-validated 33,904 of them. It has also completed more detailed 1:10,000 mapping in 160 of 200 critical sectors, with the rest due by 2028, and the data is free to download from GSI's Bhukosh portal [9]. Nationally, 15 per cent of the mapped landslide-prone area falls in the high susceptibility class [9].
The policy push is now towards local, structured risk data. The Disaster Management (Amendment) Act, 2025 mandates a National Disaster Database that includes risk assessments, mitigation plans and real-time disaster data. It also adds section 41A, which lets States set up Urban Disaster Management Authorities in State capitals and municipal corporation cities to prepare urban plans for risks such as flooding and heatwaves [1]. This matches the first priority of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030: understanding disaster risk [16].
Business problem
National atlases stop at district or state scale, but a district or urban disaster management plan needs to know which villages, wards, schools, hospitals, bridges and substations sit inside each hazard zone. In most authorities this overlay is done by hand for the plan document and is rarely updated as towns grow. Only one State had constituted an Urban Disaster Management Authority as of February 2026 [1], so most cities are starting their urban risk work from scratch.
Our solution
- A district or city risk atlas that combines NRSC flood hazard layers, GSI landslide susceptibility, elevation and drainage with local exposure layers, built through our GIS mapping and cartography service.
- Terrain and drainage analysis from elevation models, and 3D terrain and digital twin views for hill towns and flood plains.
- Exposure scoring for every village, ward and critical facility, with results in tables shaped to the district or urban plan template.
- Field checks of key assets with the My GLOBEIR app, and publication on a WebGIS portal for all departments.
Benefits
- Builds on official, peer-reviewed national layers rather than replacing them [8][9].
- Gives Urban Disaster Management Authorities a ready base for their urban plans on flooding and heatwaves [1].
- Produces the structured, location-linked risk data the National Disaster Database is meant to hold [1].
- Helps prioritise mitigation spending to the villages and assets with the highest hazard and exposure.
Privacy & data security
- Data involved: hazard layers are public, but asset lists for power, water and telecom networks and critical facilities are sensitive and are shared only with authorised users.
- Stored in India: high-accuracy survey or drone data finer than 1 m horizontal or 3 m vertical is stored and processed only in India and never reaches non-Indian servers [21][22].
- Access control: role-based access and audit logs separate public risk maps from restricted infrastructure layers.
2. Early Warning: Floods, Cyclones, Landslides and Public Alerts
India's warning chain has several official links. CWC is the nodal agency for flood forecasting and issues forecasts at 350 stations (150 inflow stations at major dams and barrages and 200 level stations on major rivers). It adds a seven-day advisory from basin-wise rainfall-runoff models to its short-range forecasts of up to 24 hours. Its C-FLOOD platform gives two-day inundation forecasts down to village level, starting with the Godavari, Tapi and Mahanadi basins, with yellow, orange and red alerts for depths below 0.5 m, below 1.5 m and above 1.5 m [3]. IMD updates district-wise heavy rainfall and cyclone warnings four times a day, valid for up to seven days, and shares them through the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), apps, websites and social media [3]. IMD has also added AI/ML models to its forecasting under Mission Mausam [1]. For landslides, GSI has issued operational and experimental forecast bulletins for 21 districts in eight states since the 2025 monsoon [9].
Public alerting runs through NDMA's SACHET Integrated Alert System, built by C-DOT on the ITU-recommended CAP standard. It is live in all 36 States and UTs, sends SMS alerts to mobile users in geo-targeted areas, and has sent over 134 billion alerts in more than 19 Indian languages. Cell Broadcast, which reaches every phone in an area at once, is being added for time-critical events [2]. The results show: a peer-reviewed IMD study records about 1,173 deaths in Gujarat from the 1998 Kandla cyclone and none from the similar cyclone Biparjoy in 2023, and attributes the change to improvements across observation, forecasting, warning and response [15]. Globally, the UN's Early Warnings for All initiative aims to protect everyone with early warning systems by the end of 2027 [17].
Business problem
The national system produces warnings; turning them into local action is the job of SDMAs and State Emergency Operations Centres, which handle sirens and last-mile dissemination [3]. A district control room receives CWC forecasts, IMD bulletins, CAP alerts and landslide bulletins separately, and must work out by hand which villages, shelters, schools and roads are affected and who must move first. The Ministry of Earth Sciences itself notes that last-mile warning still needs better local connectivity, sirens and dissemination systems [3].
Our solution
- An Emergency Operations Centre dashboard on our administration monitoring and WebGIS platforms that shows official warnings on one map with the district risk atlas.
- Automatic intersection of each warning area with villages, shelters and critical assets, producing a list of who and what is at risk.
- Action checklists by department and block, with status updates captured from the field through the My GLOBEIR app.
- Warning density and repeat-alert heatmaps for after-action review and the next season's plan.
Benefits
- Builds directly on official forecasts and alerts from CWC, IMD, GSI and NDMA [2][3][9].
- Village-level inundation forecasts from C-FLOOD can be joined with local shelters and assets as soon as they are issued [3].
- The Biparjoy experience (industry example) shows that accurate warnings combined with local action can save lives [15].
- A record of every warning and action supports audits and improvement.
Privacy & data security
- Data involved: warnings are public, but evacuation lists, contact lists of officials and lists of people needing assisted evacuation are personal data under the DPDP Act [18].
- Minimum data: dashboards show counts by village or ward; named lists are visible only to authorised roles.
- Encryption and logs: data is encrypted in transit (TLS 1.2 or higher) and at rest (AES-256), and every access is logged.
3. Satellite-Based Inundation and Damage Assessment
Satellites see what field teams cannot reach in the first hours of a disaster. Under ISRO's Disaster Management Support Programme, NRSC runs a Decision Support Centre that monitors floods, cyclones, agricultural drought, landslides, earthquakes and forest fires in near real time from space and aerial data, and provides flood hazard zonation, spatial flood early warning and landslide inventories [5]. The National Database for Emergency Management (NDEM), operational since 2013, is the national repository of multi-scale geospatial data with decision support tools for hazard and risk zonation, damage assessment, preparedness and response, built for MHA and all States and UTs [4].
For major events, the International Charter Space and Major Disasters brings 17 member organisations together to provide Earth observation data and products free for disaster response. ISRO is a founder member, and NRSC led the Charter for six months from April 2025 [6]. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is central to monsoon flood mapping because it images through cloud, day or night, while optical imagery helps map building and crop damage once skies clear.
Business problem
Relief decisions in the first days rely on partial reports from places that can be reached. Official NRSC flood maps are valuable, but districts often lack the in-house capacity to join them with village boundaries, cropland, built-up areas and their own asset lists, so the affected area by village or block is estimated slowly and unevenly. Disputes over who was affected follow.
Our solution
- Inundation and damage mapping from SAR and optical imagery through our remote sensing service, always cross-checked with official NRSC and NDEM products where available.
- Pre- and post-event change detection for built-up areas, cropland and roads, supported by AI and machine learning models for damage classification.
- Affected-area summaries by village, block and land use, and priority lists of locations for field verification.
- Results delivered on a WebMap or WebGIS dashboard alongside field survey records.
Benefits
- An area-wide view of impact long before field surveys are complete (industry example: NRSC's near-real-time flood and cyclone mapping) [5].
- Long satellite records show where flooding repeats, guiding mitigation and land-use regulation in flood plains [7].
- Field teams are sent first to the places that most need verification.
- Clear separation between official maps and GLOBEIR's analysis products keeps reporting consistent.
Privacy & data security
- Data involved: satellite imagery at medium resolution holds no personal data, but very high-resolution imagery and drone surveys of settlements can show homes and people.
- Stored in India: imagery and drone data finer than the DST threshold is stored and processed only in India [21][22].
- Aggregated outputs: damage statistics are reported by village, block or district.
4. Field Damage Surveys and Geotagged Relief Claims
Disaster relief in India is financed mainly through the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF), constituted under section 48(1)(a) of the Disaster Management Act, 2005, and the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF). For 2021-26 the SDRF corpus is Rs 1,28,122.40 crore, of which the Centre's share is Rs 98,080.80 crore. Within the SDRF, 40 per cent is set aside for response and relief, 30 per cent for recovery and reconstruction, and 10 per cent for preparedness and capacity-building [10]. Payments follow notified items and norms. Under the 2022-26 norms, for example, input subsidy is paid where crop loss is 33 per cent or more, up to 2 hectares per farmer, and a fully or severely damaged house qualifies for Rs 1,20,000 in plain areas and Rs 1,30,000 in hilly areas [11].
For recovery funding, States prepare a Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) and submit it to MHA, preferably within three months of the disaster being notified. A multi-sectoral central team, which may include members of the Inter-Ministerial Central Team that made the initial assessment, then visits for ground assessment [12]. In 2025-26 the High-Level Committee approved Rs 4,576.7 crore from the NDRF for States [1].
Business problem
Every rupee depends on an assessment made in the field. Paper surveys are slow, vary between surveyors and cannot prove where or when an assessment was made. Thresholds such as 33 per cent crop loss [11] invite disputes, and when summaries for memoranda and PDNA are compiled from many registers, errors and delays build up. Field staff also work in flooded or cut-off areas with weak network coverage.
Our solution
- The My GLOBEIR app configured as a damage survey tool, with forms that mirror the State's SDRF items and norms for houses, crops, livestock and public infrastructure; see our mobile GIS service.
- GPS location, time stamp and photos on every record, with offline capture and sync when the network returns.
- Supervisor review on a map, with records compared against satellite damage maps so that outliers can be sent back for re-survey.
- Village, block and district summaries exported for relief payment, memoranda and PDNA, with optional digital micro mapping of affected habitations.
Benefits
- Each assessment carries evidence of where and when it was made, which supports audit and grievance handling.
- Forms matched to notified norms [11] reduce errors in classification and payment.
- Faster compilation of the data needed for PDNA within the recommended three months [12].
- Consistent records across surveyors and departments.
Privacy & data security
- Data involved: survey records contain names, bank-linked beneficiary details, photos of homes and precise locations, all personal data under the DPDP Act [18].
- Field app controls: location is captured for work purposes only; background tracking in the My GLOBEIR app is optional and opt-in with a persistent notification.
- Access and retention: beneficiary details are visible only to authorised roles, every change is logged, and data is retained and deleted as the department's records policy requires.
5. Relief Logistics, Shelter Planning and Response Tracking
Once a warning turns into an event, the job becomes logistics: moving people to safe shelters, moving supplies and teams to people, and keeping track of both. The 2025 amendment's emphasis on real-time disaster data in the National Disaster Database [1], and the daily situation reports States enter into MHA's NDMIS [13], both depend on knowing what is where. Shelters need to sit outside the flood and landslide zones mapped by NRSC and GSI [7][9], and routes to affected villages change as water rises and falls.
Business problem
Shelter lists, stockpiles, boats and vehicles are usually tracked in registers and phone calls. Planners cannot easily see whether a shelter sits inside a hazard zone, whether its capacity matches the population it serves, which road to a cut-off village is still open, or where relief teams are at a given moment. After the event, proving where relief went takes days of compilation.
Our solution
- A mapped register of shelters, relief camps, stockpiles, boats and vehicles with capacity and status, checked against hazard layers.
- Route planning on the road network, updated with current inundation and landslide closures, through our geospatial data science service.
- Live tracking of response and relief teams on the operations dashboard, with geotagged delivery records.
- Daily situation summaries by village and block for reporting.
Benefits
- Shelters and stockpiles can be checked against hazard zones before the season.
- Teams and supplies can be redirected in real time as conditions change.
- Geotagged delivery records give a clear account of relief distributed.
- Data is ready for daily situation reports to the State and the Centre [13].
Privacy & data security
- Data involved: live locations of staff and lists of people in shelters are personal data [18].
- Work purpose only: staff tracking runs only during duty hours and events, and background tracking is opt-in with a persistent notification.
- Aggregated reporting: shelter occupancy is reported as counts; named lists stay with authorised officers.
6. Community Resilience and Volunteer Mapping
Communities are the first responders in most disasters. NDMA's Aapda Mitra scheme, running since May 2016, trained community volunteers in disaster response in 30 of the most flood-prone districts of 25 States, with 5,186 volunteers trained across 23 project States. States reported using them in the Kerala, Kolhapur, Assam, Tripura and Sikkim floods and Cyclone Fani, and NDMA plans to scale the scheme up to 100,000 volunteers in 350 highly vulnerable districts prone to floods, cyclones, landslides and earthquakes [14]. The scheme also calls for community emergency stockpiles at district or block level, with light search and rescue equipment and first-aid kits [14]. HLC has also approved Rs 507.37 crore for a national project on community-based disaster risk reduction through Panchayati Raj Institutions [1].
Business problem
Districts often hold volunteer lists as spreadsheets with no reliable link to location, skills, kit or current availability. When a flood or landslide strikes, officers cannot quickly see which trained responders live closest to the affected villages, which villages have no trained volunteers nearby, or where community stockpiles are kept.
Our solution
- A consent-based volunteer and resource register in the My GLOBEIR app, recording skills, kits and service areas.
- Coverage maps that compare volunteer locations and stockpiles with hazard zones to show gaps before the season.
- Task assignment and status tracking during events, always through the district administration.
- Records of mock exercises and training linked to the same map.
Benefits
- Faster mobilisation of trained responders close to the affected area.
- Visible coverage gaps help target the next round of training under the scale-up [14].
- Stockpiles can be found and checked quickly.
- Supports community-based risk reduction at Panchayat level [1].
Privacy & data security
- Data involved: volunteer names, phone numbers and home locations are personal data, collected only with free, specific and informed consent [18].
- Minimum exposure: public views show coverage by village, not individual locations.
- Control: volunteers can update or withdraw their details, and their data is erased once the purpose is served [18].