DesInventar is a conceptual and methodological development about disasters of any magnitude and about local, regional and national surrounding diversity.

The development is conceptual because it doesn't begin with the big events, that have a high impact over regions or countries but because it begins with the scattered effects of these type (big) of events over vulnerable communities at their own (local) scales and on the other hand because it considers also as disasters all the losses due to the impact of natural, technological or anthropically generated phenomena of frequent occurrence in those same communities.

The development is also methodological because, based on definitions of negative effects and losses, it allows to analize disasters in terms of temporary and spatial variables in which the disasters occur. So it is possible with DesInventar to represent cartographically all of the variables considered, through statistical data collection and elaboration of graphics organized according to administrative or political division. The purpose being that by beginning from a local view, enabling its own perspective, it will come to a spatially integrated national vision , as well as to multitemporal visions (also at a national scale).

It is an inventory system, a methodology to register data about characteristics and effects of diverse types of disasters, with special interest in disasters that are invisible from global or national scales. The inventory allows to watch acumulated data of these invisible disasters at a global or national scale.

The DesInventar methodology includes a software product with two main components. The DesInventar module is a relational and structural database through which the database is fed by filling in predefined fields (space and temporal data, types of events and causes, sources)and by both direct and indirect effects (over life, houses, infrastructure, economic sectors). The DesConsultar module allows access to the database by queries that may include relations among the diverse variables of effects, types of events, causes, sites, dates, etc. This module allows at the same time to represent those queries with tables, graphics and thematic maps.

As it can be infered from the previous information, DesInventar is also a tool that facilitates the analysis and representation in space and time of hazards, vulnerabilities and risks in a retrospective and prospective way, for applications in risk management in such various actuvities as those of planning and mitigation to those of attention and recovery.

DesInventar is useful for governmental organisms of prevention and mitigation of disasters, organisms of attention, planning and decision making organisms, so as for researchers, governmental bodies, humanitarian and nongovernmental organizations, health institutions, etc, from local to international scales.

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