Our Purpose
Better information can lead to better awareness. Better awareness can help people make better decisions.
HazardTracer was created with a clear purpose: to make information about natural hazards and extreme events more accessible to people around the world.
Natural hazards can develop quickly, affect large areas and cross national borders. In these situations, access to clear and timely information matters. Our mission is to use technology to improve the way people discover, understand and monitor hazard information that may be relevant to them.
Turning information into awareness
HazardTracer brings location-based hazard information into a single, accessible environment. Instead of requiring users to search through different sources for different types of events, we aim to make relevant information easier to discover and interpret.
Our role is not to claim certainty where certainty does not exist. Natural hazards behave differently: some may provide measurable warning signs or detectable indicators, while others cannot currently be predicted reliably before they occur.
HazardTracer therefore focuses on two complementary objectives:
- Early awareness — presenting available alerts and indicators that may point to developing hazardous conditions.
- Situational awareness — presenting recent hazard events so people can better understand what is happening around a location.
Information when it matters
A natural event becomes a human emergency when it threatens people, communities, infrastructure, ecosystems or livelihoods. Timely access to information cannot eliminate natural hazards, but it can contribute to awareness, preparedness and more informed decisions.
Whether someone is checking conditions near home, following an event in another country, preparing for a journey or simply trying to understand what is happening in a particular region, we want HazardTracer to provide a fast and intuitive starting point.
Technology in service of people and the planet
Behind every marker on a map there may be a community, an ecosystem or a landscape being affected by a natural event. For that reason, our work is guided by respect for human life, animal life, communities and the natural environment.
We believe technology creates the most value when it transforms complex information into something people can understand and use. HazardTracer is our contribution to that goal.
Our principles
- Accessibility — hazard information should be easy to find and understand.
- Timeliness — information becomes more useful when it reaches people quickly.
- Clarity — alerts, indicators and reported events should be presented without creating unnecessary certainty or alarm.
- Global perspective — natural hazards do not stop at borders, and access to information should not either.
- Responsibility — technology should complement, not replace, information and instructions from official authorities.
- Respect for life and nature — protecting people, communities and the environment remains at the heart of our purpose.
Awareness is the first step
We cannot prevent every natural hazard, and we cannot predict every event. But we can work to make relevant information easier to access.
That is the purpose of HazardTracer: helping turn hazard information into awareness, and awareness into informed action.