Hazards and incidents

This guide is for users — disaster response officers, program staff, and field personnel who record hazard events, assess impacts on registrants, and coordinate emergency responses in OpenSPP.

What is hazard and incident management?

The hazard and incident module helps you record natural or human-made disasters, assess their impact on the registrants in your system, and link affected populations to emergency response programs. It provides:

• A structured record of disaster events (typhoons, floods, earthquakes, conflict, drought, and more)

• Tools to identify which registrants are in affected geographic areas

• An impact assessment workflow with damage level tracking and verification

• Integration with programs so emergency assistance reaches affected people quickly

What you'll learn

This section covers:

1. Manage hazard incidents — Record hazard incidents, identify affected areas and registrants, assess damage, and move an incident through its lifecycle

Before you start

You need one of these access levels:

Role	What you can do
Hazard Viewer	View incidents and impact records (read only)
Hazard Officer	Create incidents, add affected areas, and record impacts
Hazard Manager	Full access — create, edit, delete, and configure categories

If you cannot see the Hazard and Emergency menu in the sidebar, contact your administrator to assign you a hazard role.

Key concepts

Term	What it means
Incident	A specific hazard event (e.g., "Typhoon Odette – December 2021")
Hazard category	The type of hazard, organized in a hierarchy (e.g., Natural > Storm > Typhoon)
Severity	How severe the incident is, rated 1 (minor) to 5 (catastrophic)
Affected area	A geographic area linked to an incident, with its own severity override
Impact	A record of how a specific registrant was affected by an incident
Damage level	The degree of harm to a registrant — Minimal, Moderate, Severe, Critical, Partially damaged, or Totally damaged
Verification status	Whether an impact record has been confirmed — Reported, Verified, Disputed, or Closed

Incident lifecycle

Incidents move through four stages:

Alert → Active → Recovery → Closed

Stage	When to use
Alert	The hazard has been identified but has not yet caused confirmed impacts
Active	The incident is ongoing and impacts are being assessed
Recovery	The acute phase has passed and recovery response is underway
Closed	The incident is fully documented and no further action is needed

Are you stuck?

The Hazard and Emergency menu is missing. You do not have a hazard role. Ask your administrator to assign you at least Hazard Viewer access.

I can see incidents but cannot create one. You need the Hazard Officer or Hazard Manager role to create incidents.

I need to link an incident to a program. See the programs section of the guide — this requires the Emergency Response configuration on the program itself, which is set up by a program manager.