A rapidly growing part of preparedness is the development of geospatial tools, data analytics, and visualizations that can be put into place ahead of a disaster. This includes making sure existing datasets, like roads and other infrastructure, demographics, and critical facilities are ready to use. Increasingly, these efforts involve the use of real-time or near real-time information from data feeds including Internet of Things (IoT) devices, reports from field crews, streaming model outputs, and others. We will focus on this in greater detail in Lesson 5 and again later when we consider the emerging technology of IoT. This diverse range of information is often summarized using maps and emergency management dashboards. Below, we'll consider some interesting examples of these trends.
Let's start with something very familiar, Google Maps! While many sophisticated methods for modeling disaster impacts aren't yet publicly available in web tools, there are in fact a very large range of options for free platforms used to evaluate and monitor a situation in progress. The Pacific Disaster Center's Global Hazards Atlas, introduced on the previous page, is one such system. Google Crisis Response, also mentioned earlier, is another example and is more readily available and usable by the responders and the general public alike.
This next example is from the PDC Global Hazard Atlas and shows the position and projected path of a tropical cyclone bearing down on Japan. Note that as with the Google map, there are a lot of other layers that can be examined to gauge likely impact and help make decisions about where resources might need to be pre-positioned. Another way this data can be used is for future planning and mapping of disaster prone areas (think back to the FEMA Southern California Earthquake example). Finally, and you will see this more in the following video, these maps can help emergency managers evaluate the potential for disasters to interact. For example, some areas may be vulnerable to a cyclone and may also have a critical facility like a power station. GIS 101 but very powerful nonetheless.
Finally, check out the impressive Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards (NOAH) program from the Philippines. This is a good example of the trend toward multi-hazard approaches to emergency management, rather than focusing on a single hazard type. This site has a lot of functionality including the ability to map the likely impact of different hazards based on historical data. After viewing this short video, take some time to click on a few of the buttons and see what you can learn. For example, display volcano hazards alongside critical facilities to see if there are places particularly at risk.
Video: How Project NOAH helped avert potential disasters (2:14 minutes)
For further information
For more on NOAH, have a look at this journal article: Disseminating near-real-time hazards information and flood maps in the Philippines through Web-GIS. This link takes you to the abstract. To see the entire document, see e-Reserves under Library Resources in Canvas.