About Yakhnama

The valleys of Gilgit-Baltistan live with floods, glacial lake outburst floods, landslides, debris flows, avalanches and earthquakes. Many events are small and local, and what is known about them is scattered across phone messages, news reports and memory.

A shared record helps residents see what has happened near them, helps researchers study patterns over years, and helps responders and journalists check facts quickly.

The longer story is on why Yakhnama exists.

Records are built in steps, and each step is visible:

• Reports. Anyone can report what they saw, with or without an account. A report is one person's observation and is never trusted on its own.
• Review. Moderators read reports, compare them with other sources and build an event: one record for one real hazard.
• Verification. Only a person can mark an event verified. Only verified, published events appear on the public record.
• Impacts. Figures such as people affected or houses damaged are recorded as claims, each with its source and a confidence of low, medium or high.

Dates say how precise they are. Positions on the public record are rounded, so no reporter's exact location is shown.

The record is public: anyone can read it without an account. The source code of this website is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, pending confirmation. The licence for reusing the record's data is still being decided; it will be shown with the records.

Yakhnama is run by Kashan Ghori, an individual in Pakistan, with volunteers. It is not a government service, and it has no advertising.

To get involved, write to hello@yakhnama.com. To keep it running, see Support Yakhnama.

Yakhnama is written in English and Urdu. You can write a report in any language; the report form lets you say whether you wrote it in Shina, Balti, Burushaski, Wakhi, Khowar, Urdu or English.