Be Information-Prepared for Disaster Management: How prepared we are in Iran

Proper investment on information empowerment has always been a win-win strategy in disaster management. Disaster information technology offers an opportunity to support disaster management: industrial accidents, road collisions, complex emergencies, earthquakes, fires, floods and similar catastrophes. Access to needed information, facilitation of the interoperability of emergency services, and provision of high-quality care to the public are some of the key requirements . Iranian Ministry of Health has recently invested on several IT solutions to boost the information power for better management of health-related events and accidents, including disaster. These tools and technologies have been created to cover the information needs of disaster managers in Pre, intra, and post disaster phases.Prediction of disaster events by monitoring abnormal patterns, monitoring the current status of disaster progress, resource management and care guidance, and informationpowered disaster recovery are all examples of what a full spectrum information-based disaster management strategy may benefit from. Iranian national health information observatory, disaster data center, and health GIS projects are the three MoH projects that are introduced and described throughout this presentation. These ongoing projects are expected to upgrade the disaster managementplan in Iran using information technologies.