Shocktracker.org: Mapping shocks, reinforcing accountability, building resilience

Shocktracker.org is a prototype of a united database of social-ecological shocks, that maps the role of human activity in aggravating ecological processes like wildfires, floods and more.

Going deeper and broader

Most existing disaster databases focus narrowly on where and when an event occurred and how many people died – and are often biased toward the Global North. Shock Tracker goes deeper and broader. It brings together location-specific information on the drivers, interconnections, and consequences of shocks, filling the key data gaps that currently hinder effective prevention and recovery strategies. It collects information from published academic papers, news, blogs but also people’s own lived experiences.

“For example, our analysis of the Brumadinho dam collapse in Brazil combined social, economic, and environmental data. The intention was to show how land-use decisions, investment flows, and infrastructure neglect compounded with local weather and ecological processes. This holistic picture could help policymakers and investors understand real-world risk, and design adaptive systems that avoid repeating the same mistakes,” explains Centre researcher Giulia Rubin, co-developer and project manager of the tool.

By connecting diverse communities, from seismologists and systems thinkers to financial analysts and policy experts, Shock Tracker also creates a shared space for dialogue and learning across disciplines that rarely interact, building the foundations for a network of resilient scientific voices and participatory science.

Better data gives deeper understanding

As far as data quality goes today, academics can often only access coarse global disaster datasets. Existing databases provide information on the number of casualties and wounded, or they give insight on the monetary value of the assets lost after impact. These numbers tell us a lot about what shock happened, but less about how it happened.

“Shocks have multiple impacts, manifest as different types of events, and are caused by many factors - weather being only one of them”, says Emmy Wassénius.

But with access to accurate qualitative and quantitative data relative to a specific region, researchers could gather deeper insights into the dynamic relationships between natural processes and human activity.

“The more layers we see, the more details we can describe for how and why a shock took place. Ideally, we could also predict its pattern and halt it before it hits a community again,” explains Giulia Rubin.

When it comes to communities, one of the researchers’ main realizations was that the most detail about the dynamics of a shock can best be provided by those who lived through the event. So, when they set up the Shock Tracker platform, they chose to open a channel between the academics and impacted communities – to integrate their stories alongside the traditional peer-reviewed literature, news articles and informal blogs.

Collective intelligence

Shock Tracker being an open-access database means that researchers can receive more detailed information about single events from the academic community, to understand how and why shocks happened. People’s inputs also help with filling the big data gaps that exists in other databases.

“People’s collective intelligence gives us climate scientists hope. Through participatory science, we could source better information by learning directly from communities that are already experiencing the effects of a warming planet,” says Giulia Rubin.

Turning science into action

Next steps for the platform include expanding the database with new cases and refining how researchers can disseminate their results, building narratives that trace the mechanisms, causes, and impacts of shocks across social-ecological systems.

The Centre researchers found that the translation process is key, because it is not enough to have a good database for social-ecological case studies: it is important to deliver the insights in a language that changemakers can understand. Giulia Rubin adds:

“As Shock Tracker develops, we will feel more confident in describing to finance actors and policymakers the full causal chain of shock events: where they start, how they happen and what we can do better.”