A R&D Program for Prompt Response about Forest-Protection Information with Platform Display System
Gwo-Jern Hwang1 Ching-Ming Wu2 Ten-Yin Chou3 Joou-Shiau Lee4
1Taiwan Forestry Bureau (TFB),#2,Sec.1.Hang-Chows.Rd.Taipei Taiwan 100
2 , 3Geographic Information System Research Center, Feng Chia University
4The Department and Graduate Institute of Forestry, National Chung-Hsing University.
E_mail: n1206153@pagic.net
Abstract
The Taiwan Forestry Bureau (TFB) is the major agency, which is authorized to manage the national forest. TFB has been a research for forest fire precaution and rescue from 1999.
In that research, the forest patrolman is equipped with radio interphone, GPS receiver, and potable Laser gun. The forest patrolman traces route can be recorded by GPS receiver and key in different code when he comes across various forest disasters. In case of fire emergence, interphone can be used to report to rescue center immediately and transmitted the coordinates of fire location and it's boundary, which are identified by Laser gun. The control system in the rescue center will compute the area and overlay the fire position on digital map. When fire-fighting team arrive the scene, digital video is using to catch the image of the fire development and ISM BAND Microwave Radio System is used to transmit to the rescue center.
Original of the Research
Forest, the land of nature, not only for its rich resources, but also it affects related to our natural economy and livelihood. However, fire emergence, plant blight, illegal cutting and unlawful cultivation happen in the forest, endanger the circumstance from peaceful and quiet. If we cannot prevent and control those factors, they will threat the forestry development and increase water and soil erosion rate. Therefore, 210 protection-management offices were set up by TFB. Besides, 450 protection-management areas were delineated from forest location, traffic, construction, residents' distribution and the disasters over the years (1998 TFB.). The protection-management officers have the obligation to patrol and report for rescue on time, and reduce the disasters and damage to minimum.
Nevertheless, it is still a difficult task to patrol and manage the mountainous area without a vast expanse. The office usually know the result after the patrolmen come back from the field and fill-up the report forms step by step, which is useless to prevent from disasters. Once disaster happened, the patrolmen only can describe the situation in the scene, and the executive officers fill the report and submit to higher level. Because the return-time is always delayed or the message is possible error, the commander may instruct wrong direction from the scene, therefore, the emergency rescue timing will be delayed.
Research Content
In this research, we aim at the disadvantages of the currently forest patrol system and disasters return-report to draft the improvement, moreover, we plan 3 targets:
- The patrolmen's position is located and displayed on digital map immediately
- The present disaster scene images can be transmitted and displayed on the digital map platform immediately
- The report of the forest-protection form can be inquired and transmitted by Internet.
Ordinarily, every patrolman has one hand-held GPS receiver that could record the trace automatically by keyboard operation. The GPS receiver could record the disaster coordinates and assign a code, and transmit the disaster coordinates and scene images to the office or the rescue center. The system can also perform the distance measurement by laser gun, record the digital photography by video, and transmit images by microwave radio. GIS module was used to develop the monitor platform on digital-maps. It can also analyze the exact data through maps overlay for topographic chart, cadastral chart, forest chart, disaster location images, area measure, the plant feature, and the scene situation, etc.
Major Techniques
Digital Map
In the past, the disaster location was only displayed on the paper maps that pieced up on the wall of the disaster rescue center. Besides, only the officers who were familiar with local environment could search the location on the maps quickly. When the disaster expanded, or it is necessary for a mobile rescue center, paper maps have some problems, such as it is difficult to carry and handle, the information is insufficient, the update speed is too slow, etc. This research engages in creating a Digital Map by digitizing, editing, and coordinates transformation to build forest topographic chart and advanced automatic mapping technology (Yang long-shi, 1998).
Geography Information System (GIS)
GIS includes hardware, software, spatial and attributes data link, and data analyze integration, such as topological data structures database management and spatial analysis. The users can build, collect, and save points, lines, polygon, and the changes of landforms (spatial data); as well as business forms, reports, measurement, diagrams (attribute data). The maps can be saved in different layers' contents, make it easy to draw, display, inquire, save and distribute. This research program to analyze and create different statistics data. After that, the result can be displayed by 3D, and the result were applied to business management, resources management, ground exploitation, maps management, production management, diseases control, environmental protection, etc.
After the skills of GIS are applied generally, the system builders can combine with Object-Oriented Programming to build executable software; or build some business GIS functions by GIS module. The users do not have to buy the complete set of GIS software since it's common windows based, and it offers the GIS functions through Internet (Fig.1). Thus, it effectively develops the functions of support and decision to execute the business of forest protection (Zhong lan-kun, 1999).
Fig.1 Structure of WWW-GIS
Fig.2 GPS constellation
