Natural disasters, such as wildfires, floods, storms, heat waves, earthquakes, landslides and many others have occurred in ever-increasing numbers in recent years.

Moreover, the World Bank estimates that economic developments, population growth and rapid urbanization will drive an increase in disaster losses over coming years1.
Traditionally, public discourse on emergency management and response has considered such natural disasters as the primary focus, but recent years have shown that fast spreading human diseases (e.g. Ebola), pests or animal diseases (e.g. Hendra virus), telecommunication systems failures, and acts of violence and terrorism have far reaching consequences requiring a similar framework of emergency response. As with natural disasters, such health, infrastructure and security incidents can critically impact communities and jeopardize public safety.
With a current focus on moving from reacting to these events as they happen towards preventing and minimizing them, big data and analytics play a critical role in societal ability to plan, prepare and recover from emergency events.