Far from merely inducing or aggravating a pathology for RSSpectating in global disaster events, the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System “combines existing web-based disaster information management systems with the aim to alert the international community in case of major sudden-onset disasters and to facilitate the coordination of international response during the relief phase of the disaster.” Although unless you have access to their alert-notification and interactive components (e.g. Virtual OSOCC), you will probably just end up fetishising humanitarian crisis into another Edward Tufte poster.





And there's also UNOSAT, a United Nations programme whose goal is “to make satellite imagery and geographic information easily accessible to the humanitarian community and to experts worldwide working to reduce disasters and plan sustainable development.”

For instance this map assessing the wholesale destruction of housing and businesses in Harare, Zimbabwe during Mugabe's urbicidal Operation Murambatsvina.


(Map courtesy of UNOSAT.)

Links:
Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System
UNOSAT
Havaria Emergency and Disaster Information Services (Budapest, Hungary)