The economic cost of natural catastrophes and man-made disasters worldwide amounted to USD 370 billion in 2011, a huge increase over the previous year. The Japanese earthquake and tsunami alone cost the national economy at least USD 210 billion. Science and technology play an increasingly vital role in managing natural disasters. To this end, a growing number of OECD countries have recently established programmes or incentives to develop and deploy information and communication technologies (ICTs), geographic information systems, and remote sensing and satellite data ().