Philippine is as prone to natural disasters as Indonesia. Recently we have witnessed the devastating Typhoon Haiyan took 6,300 lives in the Philippines. This numbers could have been fewer if DRRM (Disaster Risk Reduction Management) planning was decentralized to local level.

Understanding the importance of decentralizing DRRM for a more relevant DRRM planning, Philippine’s National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC), the NationaI Youth Commission (NYC), and the University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) initiated MAPA-HANDA, a joint effort to develop online modules on mapping for local DRRM planning.

InaSAFE is one of the open source software used as one of the technologies in MAPA-HANDA. Even though it was mainly developed within Indonesia context, InaSAFE is an open source software that could be developed and customized to fit the Philippine context.