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Pakistan portal launched to provide quake related information

An information-sharing web portal Pakistan Relief and Information Systems for Earthquakes (RISE) was launched to provide information about the 4,000 earthquake-affected villages in the largely rural North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) in Pakistan. RISE has been developed and will be maintained by a consortium of experts drawn from US and Pakistani Universities, the World Bank and the private sector with support from the Government of Pakistan. It will provide up-to-date damage and relief information about affected villages from agencies, relief workers, local officials, and anyone with access to immediate village-level data that will critically support the current coordination of relief. The portal offers pre-earthquake information showing village-level demographic and infrastructure data, major road networks and the distance of every village from the epicenter of the earthquake. Each of the 4,000 villages is also listed on a table of common headings, including everything from amount of aid received to agencies working in the area. Wall said RISE was truly a remarkable and spontaneous collaboration by a range of academics and development practitioners. "This portal will be the key to coordination among donors and relief agencies, and The World Bank will certainly use it extensively to plan our follow-up support to Pakistan," Wall added. The web portal is a joint effort by experts from Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Harvard University and Pomona College in the US, the World Bank, Pakistan's National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Center, and World Online, Pakistan's largest internet provider which is hosting the web portal. "All the latest satellite, geographical and statistical information at the village-level for the affected areas is now consolidated in one database," said Aamer Manzoor, Co-Founder and Vice-President of World Online. More

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