SciDev.Net

The Cambridge Nanoscience Centre, home to Cambridge University's Nanoscience group, conducts research on nanowires and nanotubes, dielectrophoresis and nanometre-scale characterisation of electrical properties of conducting polymers.

Its website links to ongoing projects as well as upcoming and past seminars on topics including nanocrystals, self assembly of discrete structures and catalysis by nanogold. The website also hosts an image gallery of nanoscale pictures.

The CNS, based at Arizona State University in the United States, conducts research on the societal implications of nanotechnologies and engages policymakers and businesses in dialogue on these.

The centre publishes books, articles, presentations and reports on key topics and hosts a network of researchers developing and testing new processes of 'anticipatory governance' to understand and govern rapidly emerging areas of nanotechnology.

The CNS-UCSB serves as a network hub for researchers and educators working on the societal issues of nanotechnologies, including historical contexts, innovation processes and risk perception. It provides access to its research results, scientific papers, meeting reports, policy documents and presentations on a range of topics including water.

The centre publishes news on upcoming events and links to other US organisations working on nanotechnology.

ZKI — run by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) — acquires, processes and analyses satellite data to provide information on natural disasters and help guide relief activities. It publishes maps on potential building damage, population density and affected areas for all sorts of disasters including earthquakes, fires, landslides and floods.

ZKI also runs a fire service for Europe and North Africa, based on MODIS sensors.

The Dartmouth Flood Observatory, based in the United States, uses remote sensing data to detect, measure and map river discharge and flooding. It publishes rapid response inundation maps during a flood as well as an atlas of large floods from 1985 to present.

Data from the observatory are used by several disaster alert and relief agencies, including Sentinel Asia, Thomson Reuters AlertNet, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and Europe's Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System.

The Desert Research Institute is based in Nevada in the United States. Its principal research areas include atmosphere, water and land management – in the United States and in the developing world. The institute is engaged in a project to bring clean water and sanitation to communities in Ghana, Mali and Niger through the West Africa Water Initiative (WAWI). WAWI aims to do this before 2008.

The Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) is a small constellation of remote sensing satellites, built by UK-based Surrey Satellite Technology but individually owned by partner countries including Algeria, China, Nigeria and Turkey.

The DMC satellites provide daily coverage of the earth and were specifically designed to support the logistics of disaster relief. Each partner country gives five per cent of its capacity to free daily imaging of disaster areas for aid agencies. The group as a whole is also signed up to the International Charter for Space in Major Disasters.

EM-DAT, run by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, provides statistics and data on disasters' impact on humans, such as the number of people killed, injured or affected as well as economic damage estimates and disaster-specific aid contributions.

Users can search the database or pull out summary information including graphs to show temporal trends as well as reference maps of disasters by type or date.

FEWS NET, funded by the US Agency for International Development, provides early warning and vulnerability information on food security issues to 25 countries, many of which are in the developing world.

FEWS NET uses a combination of satellite data and socio-economic analyses to publish regular bulletins, updates and briefings as well as drought and food shortage alerts.

The disasters group of GEOSS integrates satellite data with other information to help disaster managers reduce vulnerability, improve early warning and support recovery measures.

The group has set up a coastal zone community of practice, established a global wildland fire early warning system and supports key organisations such as Sentinel Asia.

It publishes information about all its achievements as well as targets and planned activities.