GIS approach for disaster management through awareness

GIS approach for disaster management through awareness - an overview

Sankar. R
Sankar_raju2001@yahoo.co.in

Karthi. S
K_804@fastmail.ca
B.E. Geo-Informatics, Dept. of Civil Engineering
Anna University, Chennai

Abstract
Disaster management has been the hot topic in recent times. A lot many management techniques have evolved through various discussions. All the management techniques that are being developed are understood by, and confined to the intellectual community and hence lack mass participation. Awareness of the disasters is the only effective way in which one can bring about mass participation. Hence, any disaster management is successful only when the general public has some awareness about the disaster.

In the design of such an awareness program, spatial data becomes imperative and for the analysis of the spatial data and the representation of the results in spatial format, a Geographical Information System (GIS) becomes the obvious and effective choice. The usage of the spatial system provides the advantages of emphasis on the areas or locations which need more attention. This paper aims at providing a methodology of designing a GIS based awareness program for earthquake, flood, landslide, drought, diseases and other natural and man made disaster management. Further, the paper discusses the use of GIS to decide upon the better ways of creating awareness on the various factors mentioned above.

The methodology suggested is in the Indian context emphasises the role of zonation, literacy and media usage. It involves the use of maps showing Earthquake zonation, flood risk area zonation, landslide zonation, drought zonation, disease prone area zonation, land use, literacy rate, population density, media usage, occupation of people and rainfall. These maps which are input to GIS, result in an analytically derived awareness program, which is then compared with a successfully operating awareness program. Such a comparison is also an indicator of the outcome of the awareness program.

In conclusion, the proposed GIS based awareness program would improve the currently practiced disaster management programs and if implemented, would result in a proper dosage of awareness and caution to the general public, which in turn would help the activities of disaster management.

Introduction
The earth has been an unstable proposition throughout its existence. Man who entered the scene has been exploring during his short existence to unravel the various mysteries which are mysteries till date. These mysteries have been understood by and confined to the intellectual community. But, when the victims of the mysteries are the people then they need to know what the mysteries are and the impact the mysteries can have on them. As the proverb says,

“Knowing your strengths and your foes’ strengths is half the battle won”.

Thus, the need of the hour is awareness about the disasters and the ways of managing them.

This paper discusses how disaster can be managed through awareness and suggests a methodology to design an awareness program with the help of the spatial component. But before discussing this let us discuss what a disaster is? What disaster management is? How disasters can be managed by spreading awareness about disasters? And what is the role of GIS in disaster management?

Disasters
‘Disasters’ as a term has been interpreted in a lot many ways by various individuals and organizations. The reason for this is the lack of consensus on what a disaster is. But, in recent times due to increase in the amount of research going into disasters and their management and mitigation, almost many of the definitions have more or less been talking about human sensitivity towards natural or man-made or environmental hazards i.e., in other words the definitions have become anthropocentric and have reached a level of standardization. So, in order to understand the term disaster we need to understand the term ‘hazard’ and the human sensitiveness towards a hazard. Now, let us look at them.

Hazard can be defined or viewed as a naturally occurring or human-induced process or event with the potential to create loss, i.e. a general source of danger.

In other words, a hazard is a rare or extreme event in the natural or human-made environment that adversely affects human life, property or activity to the extent of causing a disaster.

So, any natural phenomenon like earthquake or a man-made phenomenon like a radioactive explosion can be a source of hazard, but whether it would culminate into a disaster depends on two factors.

Physical Exposure- reflecting the range of potentially damaging events and their statistical variability at a particular location.
Human vulnerability- reflecting the breadth of social and economic tolerance to such hazardous event at the same site. The factors which influence vulnerability are
Rapid urbanisation and migration: Rapid population growth, migration and poverty are related to the major phenomenon of rapid urbanization. The massive number of urban increasingly find fewer options for availability of safe and desirable places to build their houses. Here again, competition for scarce resources, an inevitable consequence of rapid urbanization, can lead to manmade disasters.
Transitions in cultural practices: Transitions in cultural practices brings in insecurity and vulnerability. Also, conflicting cultural practices can lead to civil conflict and strife.
Environmental degradation: Many disasters are either caused or exacerbated by environmental degradation. For example, deforestation leads to rapid runoff which contributes to flooding.
Lack of awareness and information: Disasters can also occur when people who are vulnerable have not been educated on how to get out of harm’s way or take protective measures at the onset of a disaster.
War and civil strife: War and civil strife are regarded as hazards or extreme events that produce disasters. War and civil strife often cause the displacement of the population. The causal factors of war and civil strife include competition for scarce resources, religious or ethnic intolerance, and ideological differences. Many of these are also byproducts of the preceding factors.

Therefore, “It may be concluded that a disaster is a serious disruption of the functioning of a society, causing widespread human, material, or environmental losses, caused by hazards, which exceed the ability of affected society (community) to cope using only its own resources.”

Thus far we have seen what a disaster is. Now let us discuss about disaster management.

Fig.1: The figure shows how resources can culminate into disasters (Smith. K, 1996)

Disaster management
Disaster management is nothing but skillful ways and methods of controlling a disaster. Disaster management techniques or methods are based on the economic status of the country and hence it varies from country to country. Any disaster management technique involves certain amount of investment. Hence the process of managing disasters and thus increasing safety, involves a balancing act that between the cost of reducing the risk of a disaster and the benefits arising from the amount of risk reduced. Thus, developed countries manage disasters better than developing countries.

When we talk of effective disaster management, a sequential series of actions should be implemented. Figure 2 shows the sequential series of actions that should be implemented.

We have seen, what a disaster is and what disaster management is and now we are going to see how disaster can be managed through awareness. Before entering into this, let us see what has been the traditional management technique. The traditional management technique has been based on either physical corrective engineering or the post-event emergency responses. The relief period covers the few ‘golden’ hours or days after the impact. After the initial rescue of survivors, it is concerned with the importation of basic supplies to ensure no further loss of life. The rehabilitation phase involves the following few weeks or months during which the priority is to encourage the area to begin to function again. Finally, reconstruction, often taking many years, occurs.

Fig.2: Disaster Management Cycle (Smith. K, 1996)

As we went through the above traditional technique there was no mention on public participation in the management process. This is where all the traditional techniques become or tend to become ineffective. For any management method to be successful, it requires mass participation, which not only gives strength but also makes the task very simple. So, for effective management of disasters in India, which is one among the most populous countries in the world, it is very important that we bring about mass participation. But how do we bring about mass participation in a country like India? The solution would be, to make people aware about disasters and educate them to know is their responsibility during such a disaster. Apart from bringing about mass participation and responsibility in people, awareness brings about

Co-operation between the government, the intellectual community and general public.
Individual preparedness before, during or after a disaster.
The tendency to help the victims of the disaster.
Compliance with the laws and legislations for disaster control.

Thus, when awareness and education about disasters are provided to people, disaster management becomes a simpler task. One of the causal factors of vulnerability of a population, as we have seen earlier, is lack of awareness and education about disasters. It is also the only factor which can be tackled very easily and immediately in the Indian context, because poverty cannot be eliminated in a developing country like India; ungoverned population growth has been controlled to some extent but that again through awareness; rapid urbanization and migration cannot be stopped at present which would take long years; transition in the cultural practices cannot be stopped that easily which again is a slow process and to a greater extent depends on the people’s mindset; environmental degradation prevention is a paradoxical situation in a country like India where the development depends heavily on the industries and so it is again a long term solution; war and civil strife are factors which are very rare for any country. Moreover all the factors except poverty and war and civil strife can be controlled to some extent through awareness and education. One more justification to disaster management through awareness is that it balances well between the cost of disaster reduction and benefits from the disaster reduction which is the utmost that a country like India would want from disaster management. Thus, awareness and education is the only short and effective method for disaster management. There are many of examples where awareness has played a pivotal role in reducing hazards with the potential of becoming disasters to nothing.

Some of them are ‘Polio vaccine program to eliminate polio’
‘AIDS prevention program conducted by NACO’
‘Small pox vaccination program’
‘Family planning scheme’ All the above four have been publicized and people were made to realize the ground realities behind the diseases (biophysical hazards) which made the people aware of the situation and thus induced a mass participation (public participation), which finally led to the success of each of the schemes. Hence awareness and education here again prove that ‘Knowledge is power’. Now we have to see where GIS fits into the scheme of things.

Role of GIS in disaster management
Disaster can be managed well through spatial planning and one requires a GIS (Geographical Information System) for such a management. Because, the data required for disaster management is coming from different scientific disciplines and all data should be integrated to obtain results, which often requires a GIS. In general, the following types of data are required for a GIS:

Data on the disastrous phenomena (for example, landslides, floods, earthquakes), their location, frequency, magnitude, frequency and so on.
Data on the environment in which the disastrous events might take place: topography, geology, geomorphology, soils, hydrology, land use, vegetation and so on.
Data on elements that might be destroyed if the event takes place: infrastructure, settlements, population, socioeconomic data and so on.

GIS as a tool in disaster management has been used,

In the disaster prevention phase, GIS is used for managing the large volumes of data needed for the hazard and risk assessment;
In the disaster preparedness phase it is a tool for planning of evacuation routes, for the design of centers for emergency operations, and for integration of satellite data with other relevant data in the design of disaster warning system;
In the disaster relief phase, GIS is extremely useful in combination with GPS (Global Positioning System) in search and rescue operations in areas that have been devastated and where it is difficult to orientate;
In disaster rehabilitation phase GIS is used to organise the damage information and the post disaster census information and in the evaluation of sites for reconstruction.

But, here we are going to use GIS to design an awareness program.

Fig.3: Steps of Integrated Analysis

Methodology
As mentioned earlier, GIS is used for designing an awareness program based on the following factors

Zonation of hazard, based on the risk,
Land use,
Population density,
Literacy rate and
Media usage.

Now, let us discuss the role of each one of them in the design of the awareness program.

Hazard zonation
Various regions are affected by various hazards and the zonation of hazards based on their risk frequency, magnitude or intensity would help us determine what hazard affects a particular area (location) more. This in turn, helps us to concentrate on the hazard and the level of awareness that has to be created in that area. By this way one can reduce the money spent on awareness as the money that is spent is not uniform but based on the hazard risk. This results in considerable savings and no compromise is made on the awareness that ought to be created. More over, hazard zonation also helps us in the development programs that are charted out i.e., it helps us to decide as to what type of development should take place over a particular area, so that the hazard does not affect the development. Hence, hazard zonation is the most important factor in the design of the awareness program.

Land use
It is the most important factor (map) after the hazard zonation map, which tells us as to how the land has been used over the zonated area. It also gives us a clear picture as what type of land use are to be affected by a hazard and what would be the extent of the loss of property and wealth of the people. It also helps us in estimating the areal extent that has to be covered during an awareness program if the people are to be approached directly, thereby helping us to calculate the number of personnel that would be required based on time and the cost that would be involved in conducting such a program.

Population density
The population density of a particular location gives us an indication of the number of people who are to be affected by a hazard and also gives us an indication of the chances of the hazard culminating into a disaster. With regard to the awareness program, population density gives us the cost and time involved (when the population density is more the cost and the time involved to create awareness is more and creation of awareness is most important) in the awareness program.

Literacy
Literacy is again a major factor in creating awareness. Literate people can be made aware easily as they understand easily and with less effort and money. Literacy also decides the media that has to be used to create awareness among people. For example, the media can be written media like newspapers, magazines, pamphlets and seminars and symposiums, for the literate and for the illiterate the awareness can be in the form of audio-visual media like radio, television, cinema and street plays. This again channelises the money being spent.

Media Usage
This refers to the media being used by the people for news, entertainment and in general acquiring information like cinema, street plays, television, radio, newspapers and magazines. Based on the media which is most used, the awareness can be created through that media which makes the work simple and again reduces the cost. Media usage is a factor which is more or less based on literacy. For example, literate people tend to use more of written media to get information whereas the illiterate people use more of audio-visual media. Thus media usage is a very vital factor in creating awareness.

When the hazard zonation map, land use map, population density map, literacy map and media usage map are input to a GIS and then an overlay is performed by giving weights and ranks to the various factors. The result of the overlay would give us areas where the awareness should be created, on what disaster, to what level, its intensity and the type of media that can be best used. Thus such an awareness program can be compared with an awareness program, if any, conducted earlier. This would help us estimate the success and also help us make any alteration in the awareness program.

The justification of GIS usage for the design of awareness program comes from the following facts:

Integration of various factors (data).
Optimisation of resources and investment.
Results obtained are in the spatial format (maps) which are easy to understand.

The above steps can be explained using a diagram as in figure.3.

Remarks
One should not be in the wrong notion that disasters can be managed by awareness alone. The idea behind awareness is to bring about mass participation in whatever activities that are being taken towards the welfare of the society. Thus, co-operation between the public and government organisations (related to disaster management) is a good indication of reducing disaster and building a healthier and safer nation.

Conclusions
The authors would like to conclude that a GIS designed awareness program to manage disasters would improve the present methods of disaster management as well as the quality of awareness programs. Thus, by integrating the hazard zonation, land use, population density, literacy rate and media usage data using GIS, the process of creating awareness is approached in a holistic manner, which would not be possible otherwise. Moreover, the following would result if such an awareness program is implemented.

Proper dosage of awareness and caution to the general public, thus bringing up self preparedness towards the disaster.
Optimisation of money and resources.
A wealth of spatial database on hazard zonation.

References

Smith. K.,1996, Environmental Hazards, Assessing risk & reducing disaster, II Edition, London & New York, ROUTLEDGE.
URL:http://www.pitt.edu
URL:http://www.reliefweb.int/library/mcda/refman