Pacific Disaster Center

Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) is an applied science, information and technology center, working to reduce disaster risks and impacts on life, property, and the economies worldwide.

PDC's products and services are used to support sound decision making in disaster response and civil-military humanitarian assistance operations, as well as in disaster risk reduction, mitigation and planning. The Center is primarily engaged in:

PDC was established by the U.S. Congress following Hurricane Iniki's devastation of the Hawaiian Island of Kauai in 1992, and became operational in 1996. Originally created to use information resources to mitigate the impacts of natural disasters in Hawai‘i, today PDC resources are used locally and globally by disaster and crisis management professionals, planners and executive decision makers, national governments, regional organizations, and International- and Non-Governmental Organizations (I/NGO).

The headquarters of PDC is located on the Island of Maui in Hawai‘i, with additional presence on the Island of Oahu, in Colorado and Washington, DC. PDC also maintains a project office at the Water Resource University in Hanoi, Vietnam. Since 2006, the University of Hawai‘i has been the managing partner of PDC.

PDC is a public/private partnership sponsored by the PDC Program Office (OSD-Policy). The content of the information here does not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the U.S. Government and no official Government endorsement should be inferred.

In its earliest years, PDC did the initial development and deployment of various applications and web-based tools for the use of disaster management professionals and the general public. Those tools have been maintained and further developed since, and have been deployed to more organizations and nations. The Center developed its first computerized decision support system for disaster managers within the U.S. military working in the Caribbean. PDC also support for humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan in 2002. Event-related efforts up from 1996 through 2003 included providing direct information-technology support for operations related to Hurricane Jimena threatening Hawaii, flooding and landslides in American Samoa, Super Typhoon Pongsona in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, Super Typhoon Lupit in the Philippines and Federated States of Micronesia; and numerous wildfires on Maui.

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