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Development of an SDI Conceptual Model to Facilitate Disaster Management
Ali Mansourian
Faculty of Geodesy & Geomatics Engineering, K.N.Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
alimansourian@yahoo.com
Abbas Rajabifard
Department of Geomatics, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
abbas.r@unimelb.edu.au
Mohammad Javad Valadan Zoej
Faculty of Geodesy & Geomatics Engineering, K.N.Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
valadanzouj@kntu.ac.ir
1 Introduction
Disaster is defined as a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society causing widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses which exceed the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources. In order to reduce the undesirable impacts of disasters, there are world wide trends on managing disasters. Disaster management is a cycle of activities beginning with mitigating the vulnerability and negative impacts of disasters; preparedness for responding operations; responding and providing relief in emergency situations such as search and rescue, fire fighting, etc.; and aiding in recovery which can includes physical reconstruction and the ability to return quality of life to a community after a disaster.
Information is fundamental requirement for disaster management. Considering that most of the information required for disaster management has spatial component or location (Cutter et. al 2003), GIS with the capability of spatial data display, analysis and management has proven crucial in detecting, mitigating, preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters (Amdahel 2002). However, current studies show that although spatial data and GIS can facilitate disaster management, there are substantial problems with collection, access, dissemination and usage of required spatial data for disaster management (SNDR 2002 and Jain and McLean 2003). Such problems become more serious during disaster response phase with its dynamic and time-sensitive nature.
Disaster response is dynamic and decision-makers need to be updated on the latest emergency situation. Disaster response is also time-sensitive with little allowance on delay in decision-making and response operations. Therefore, any problem or delay in data collection, access, usage and dissemination has negative impacts on the quality of decision-making and hence the quality of disaster response. With this in mind, it is necessary to utilize appropriate frameworks and technologies to resolve current spatial data problems for disaster management.
It is suggested that Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) as an initiative in spatial data management can be an appropriate framework and a web-based system can be an appropriate tool for resolving current problems with spatial data. With the other word, web-based GIS and SDI as an integrated framework can facilitate and improve disaster management, particularly disaster response, by resolving current problems with collection, dissemination, access and integration of spatial data for use.
This paper aims to describe the development of an SDI conceptual model and a prototype web-based system that facilitate spatial data collection, access, dissemination, and usage for proper disaster management. This is based on an ongoing research and case study in Iran which investigates the role of SDI in disaster management with emphasize on the response phase.
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