Strengthening Disaster Risk Management in Azerbaijan with EO

The GDA Disaster Resilience consortium and the World Bank’s Global Programme for Disaster Risk Analytics (GPDRA) introduced advanced Earth observation (EO) tools to strengthen disaster risk management in Azerbaijan. Using satellite imagery, radar data, vegetation indices (NDVI), and infrastructure and land-use information, they mapped hazards including floods, landslides, and earthquakes across the country’s diverse terrain, from high mountains to coastal plains.

Integrating EO data with building footprints, settlement height, land use, and population distribution enabled the quantification of exposure and vulnerability, supporting more precise estimates of direct economic losses. The approach combined satellite-derived flood extent and depth with demographic and structural information to model potential damage across sectors, applying region-specific vulnerability curves and global datasets where local data was limited.

Read more about this Case Study here: How EO helps Azerbaijan Prepare for Disasters

Related Use Case

• Exposure of Assets and Vulnerability Mapping