Content Standards

These standards are to ensure that all pages in Disaster Risk Gateway are consistent, accessible and maintainable supporting usability to the target audiences (researchers, decision-makers, educators and students) and compliance with accessibility guidelines.

Page Content

• Page name
  • Use clear, descriptive titles that capture the topic (e.g. Mult-Risk Assessment Guidelines' instead of Guidelines)
  • Avoid abbreviations unless widely recognised
• Metadata requirements
  • Publication year: year the approach (tool, method etc.) was published
  • Access: select if the source is open or paid access
  • Link: add URL to the approach being written about
  • Authors: full list of authors who developed/published the approach
  • Organisation(s): use if the approach is authored by organisations rather than individuals
• Description
  • Must be **non-technical** and written in plain English (up to 350 words)
  • Avoid jargon; explain technical terms
  • Define any abbreviations
  • The description should be referenced where necessary
  • The description should be original text and not directly copied from anywhere. It should also be sourced from open source information (e.g. the abstract of a paywalled journal).
• Technical Considerations
  • Briefly describe relevant technical aspects to using the described approach (e.g. programming language, software, input files etc.).
  • Keep language simple and avoid unnecessary complexity.
• Keywords
  • Add a minimum of three and a maximum of five keywords for search optimisation

Style

• Present facts objectively and without bias.
• Use simple, precise language; avoid jargon unless explained.
• Follow British English spelling and grammar (UK-based site).
• Include any references

Media & Links

• Images: Use relevant, high-quality images (up to 2MB) with proper licensing. The correct licensing information should be selected when uploading the image. Include a description of the image when uploading the file. This will be visible when the image is selected.
• Contrast: Use high contrast colours for any images and diagrams inline with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
• File Naming: Use descriptive names (e.g., Multi-hazard_Framework.png).
• Links: Internal links for related pages; external links should only be reputable sources and should be tested before publication.

Quality Control and Content Governance

Before publishing, please check:

• Metadata completed (publication year, authors)
• Links tested
• Accessibility compliance checked (high contrast colours for images; descriptions of images)

Version control:

• All edits are tracked and can be viewed for a page by selecting View History in the Tools menu.

Maintenance

If you see outdated or erroneous content, please flag this to the site administrators (DisasterRiskGateway@bgs.ac.uk).

Ethics, Integrity and Compliance

Contributors must adhere to the site’s Terms of Use, including the spirit and the letter of the following standards. The standards apply to each part of any contribution as well as to its whole:

Contributions must:

• be accurate (where they state facts)
• be genuinely held (where they state opinions)
• comply with applicable law in the UK and in any country from which they are posted
• Disclose when AI tools assist in content creation by stating “Acknowledgement of AI Assistance [name of AI tool] and how it contributed (e.g. Acknowledgement of AI Assistance: M356 CoPilot was used to reduce the word count of the description).

Contributions must not:

• contain any personal information
• contain any material which is defamatory to any person
• contain any material which is obscene, offensive, hateful or inflammatory
• promote sexually explicit material
• promote violence
• promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age
• infringe any copyright, database right or trademark of any other person
• be likely to deceive any person
• be made in breach of any legal duty owed to a third party, such as a contractual duty or a duty of confidence
• promote any illegal activity
• be threatening, abuse or invade another's privacy, or cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety
• be likely to harass, upset, embarrass, alarm or annoy any other person
• be used to impersonate any person, or to misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person give the impression that they emanate from us, if this is not the case advocate, promote or assist any unlawful act such as (by way of example only) copyright infringement or computer misuse

Acknowledgement of AI Assistance M356 CoPilot was used to help generate the content standards for Disaster Risk Gateway.