The frequent occurrence of natural disasters in countries along the “Belt and Road” has seriously affected the security and social development of these countries and restricted the implementation of the “Belt and Road” Initiative to some extent. Therefore, it is important to provide comprehensive and systematic disaster data, realize the spatialization of disaster data, and conduct standardized analysis of data products, which will be of great value and practical significance in reducing disaster risk in countries along the “Belt and Road” and even the world, and effectively responding to major natural disasters.

Based on the analysis of the widely used disaster database in the world, SDIM carried out the research and development of spatial processing technologies of disaster data aiming at the problems of different warehousing standards of disaster events, low spatial degree and uneven data completeness. As a result, the transformation from a statistical disaster database to a statistical and spatial disaster database has been realized. Furthermore, by analysing the disaster history of the Belt and Road countries, especially the disaster risk in China’s new urbanization process, a research report on the impact of the earthquake and geological disasters, flood and drought disasters, storm disasters and climate change-related disasters on the new urbanization process was completed.

In May 2019, the UN Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2019 (GAR) was released in Geneva, Switzerland. Signed by the UN Secretary-general, the report contains 60 studies on disaster reduction worldwide, in which the research report entitled Disaster Risks and Response Strategies in Process of Urbanization in China written by SDIM was included as the only one in China.