Disaster Management Base on Geoinformatics

l 2 l l l
Elmira Shamshiry , Behzad Nadi , Mazlin Bin Mokhtar , Ibrahim Komoo , Halimaton Saadiah Hashim
lInstitute for Environment and Development (LESTARI)
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), 43600 UKM BANGI, Selangor, Malaysia
2Universiti Putra Malaysia. Institute of Advanced Technology (TTMA)
nadibehzad@gmail.com

Abstract---Disasters including natural and manmade make
heavy losses in life and property each year. This subject can
affect society, economy, and environment and can be a serious
threat for development. In 10 years ago over 200 million people
are have been effected both life and property. This figure is
seven times more than losses in war. After the earthquake in
Bam (a city in south Iran), tsunami in south-eastern of Asia,
fire in Australia, and other disasters, the management of
disaster has been considered more than before. They have tried
to use all facilities and equipment for reduction of disaster
damage. Over 80% of necessary data in disaster management
are spatial data. The applications of geoinformatics technology
products particularly derived from space earth observation
satellite and remote sensing integrated with GIS technology to
various areas of earth sciences, urban management,
geohazards, mapping, planning, early warning system and
development has been highly rewarding. Spatial data and
advanced technologies have an important role in disaster
management because Geographic Information System (GIS)
can help in identifying disaster points. GIS combines geospatial
data, and hardware, software that can analyze data to Produce
information. GIS mainly involves saving and analysis of data
according to spatial and attribute data. GIS can combine and
analyze spatial and non-spatial data .We have made an attempt
to consider disasters management according to facilities and
role of Geospatial Technology in control of disaster (especially
earthquake).
Key words--- Management of disaster, geospatial,
earthquake, 3D GIS.
I. INTRODUCTION
Natural catastrophes cause a lot of casualties and
damages in most and especially developing countries because
of being sudden on one hand and extent of influence in the
other hand. These phenomena, other than having casualties
and social difficulties over days and weeks after happening,
cause damages and economic inelegance which survivors
will be involved and economic aftermaths have an increasing
trend as average annual damages resulting from natural
Disasters increased from 20 billion dollars in 1990 to more
than 70 billion dollars in 2004 [1].
Among these, earthquake phenomena have most
widespread role [2].
Geological instances indicate that million years before
beginning of life on earth, this planet had many experiences
of destructive earthquake phenomena. Ancient Japanese
called earthquake 'Namazoo' which is one kind of giant cat
fish. They believed that 'Kashima God' has jailed Namazoo
under a cliff using a rock key, but every time Kashima
decrease this pressure for some rest, Namazoo quake
barbarically and cause earth to vibrate [3]. Used a GIS-based
combined slope hydrology/stability model to assess the likely
impact of a change in hydrological conditions on the
frequency with. A review on statistics of natural disasters in
various parts of the worlds shows that their damages and
magnitude of landslide activity [4].
Emergency situations in urban areas require:
1) Excellent coordination between different relief /rescue
groups;
2) appropriate information (especially geo-referenced
information);
3) Intelligence in communicating orders and information.
Emergency response involves many people: rescue teams
on the field, decision-makers at different levels of
government, citizens, press. Their tasks, and therefore their
data needs, vary drastically from making decision to just
following the development of the situation.
Provided a GIS framework using probabilistic analysis in
order to assess landslide hazard map due to earthquake by
taking into account estimation uncertainties and spatial
variability of geological, geotechnical and seismological
parameters [5].
The use of satellite data and GIS has opened the door for
immense opportunities in large-scale mapping, 3D analysis,
updating of existing maps, projects planning and decision­
making [6]. This phenomenal growth in the field of remote
sensing and GIS is due to the successful launching of series
of satellites and unlimited applications of Geographic
Information System (GIS). That is because the brain of the
human is unlimited and day by day more applications and
use of geoinformatics technology are explored and felt for
the society. Ancient Chinese believed also earth on the back
of some animal and its unusual jolts and movements cause
earthquakes [7]. Whereas each crisis has its special
characteristics, having information and experience analysis
of past events is of most importance. The role of information
before or in incidence of crisis, is giving quick alerts to
prevent uncontrollable situation. Having an information
system and extending it, helps to be ready for giving alerts in
occurrence of earthquake and storing its lateral information
such as damages and manner of effectiveness after
occurrence of an earthquake in case of this kind of crisis [8].

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 To forecast an earthquake, it is also necessary to access
an information system, because getting hands from the past is
one way to anticipate the procedure of its occurrence. So
with focusing information in one place and proper
categorizing in a way that development and extracting of the
needed information would be easy, is the most important
capability of an information system [9].
II. CRISIS MANAGEMENT
The distributed management of geo-information, the
variety of systems, formats, representations and data
structures, make this task extremely challenging. Today,
numerous organizations design, store and manage geospatial
information about mapping, buildings, topography, utilities,
etc. These organizations operate independently and their
work might be even concentrated on an individual life-cycle
phase. Hardly any of them work within a multidisciplinary
environment, which means they may not have been required
to develop interoperable systems.
From late past century, public organizations and NGOs
have shown interest in recognition of procedures of these
kinds of phenomena and designing some schemes to manage
them, because of wide damages and casualties of natural
disasters. United Nation also called the last decade of past
century 'International Decade of Natural Disaster Reduction
(IDNDR)' to reach to a safe environment in respect to natural
disasters and reduce their effects and one of its 7 goals was
'crisis management'.
Crisis management is an applied science which is a tool
to systematically observe past events for analysis in order to
find an instrument which can be used to prevent disaster
incidence or be ready for collation and in the other hand in
case of incidence, expedite relieving and circumstance
improvements.
Crisis management is schematization, organization, and
taking consideration in a way that lead to reduction of
disaster impression on casualties and environment. Crisis
management procedure includes three basic phases which are:
preparation for crisis incidence, relieving and responding in
the case of crisis incidence, and improve recuperation and
reconstruction after happening.
Preparation includes some actions which are performed
to reduce crisis effects or structuralize made reflections and
developing a mechanism for quick and organized reflection.
Preparation can contain provision of practical programs for
periods after earthquake, instructions and alert system.
Assisting includes all actions which are done just after
happening of an earthquake. Those actions are taken to save
some people from death, retinue of their possessions and also
to eliminate damages in crisis. Responding and assisting
operations usually are performed in very intolerable
situations and face to very difficult executive specific
problems. Performing responding operation usually require
experienced staff, facilities, etc. without having a suitable
program, organization and enough personnel training, the
possibility of this operation's success in saving and
medicating of injuries, providing shelter and food, operating
telecommunication, etc. would not be possible. The time
period needed for responding operation is usually limited to a
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short time which is variable with respect to the dimension of
the disaster.
Aforementioned operation is often performed in short,
medium and long term.
III. SPATIAL DATA AND EARTHQUAKE MANAGEMENT CRISIS
The information needs to be delivered to people based on
their roles and tasks, time constraints, changing
circumstances, stress, pain and fatigue, disturbed (or lack of)
communication channels, equipment with limited capacity
and damaged or destroyed infrastructure. There are three
factors for communication information. They are as follows:
Available technology (equipment such as hand-held
devices, PCs, virtual or augmented reality devices,
wired/wireless communication, etc.)
Level of emergency/danger (is information being
delivered to someone actively responding to a fire, or is the
person in a safe place)
Physical characteristics (age, gender, disability)
Human efforts to repel earthquakes are now a hatch
called 'earthquake crisis management'. In fact, earthquake
management includes a series of resolutions which indicate
the amplitude of the crisis to some extent, after incidence of
an earthquake. When an earthquake happens, several
operations should be performed in order to minimize
damages which include refuges presentation, medical
munitions, etc. To present these services, various kind of
information should be accessible in an information center in
shortest time. In an earthquake incidence in a specific place,
there is need for hospital reliving and with due attention to
population information, number of casualties and medical
centers capacities around the place of incidence can be
gained rapidly and schematizing to save disastrous and
needed operations. In other words, earthquake crisis
management is a tool for systematic observation of crisis and
analysis in order to find a solution which can be used to
prevent outbreaks of crisis or in the case of happening, to
reduce their effects, be prepared for quick assisting
operation and improvement of situation.
Prerequisite of this effective management are information
system and information propagation of
crisis management network. Increasingly progresses in IT
and telecommunication industry in one hand, development of
various information databases on the other hand have led to
accessibility of needed information by user, in any place and
time [10]. It means that each manager or assistant as a user of
this network, using a hand terminal, can retrieve needed
information from central database and use it for decision
making after analysis. In earthquake crisis management other
than social information and juridical, there will be need of
spatial and time as well. Scientific studies say that majority
part of this information is related to a specific position on
earth or have a spatial nature. So, spatial information has an
essential role in facilitation of earthquake crisis managers'
activities.
Although several studies indicate that using spatial
information will expedite earthquake crisis management,
there are some basic difficulties in gathering, distribution,
accessibility and utilization of needed spatial information for
earthquake crisis management. These problems have more
show off in incidence of the crisis [11]. Whereas
management process in these phases is dynamic one. In the
other words, relief officers in site and people who analyze
phenomenon in crisis room and make decision for that, need
to access updated information about current circumstance of
the phenomenon. The most important piece of spatial
information in earthquake crisis management is: basin area,
population, geology of roads, transmission lines, earthquake
background, and meteorological data and also the ability of
coverage of maps. So, any problems or delays in data
gathering, distribution and utilization happen, negative
effects on the quality of earthquake crisis management can be
seen.
IV. GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM
CHARACTERISTICS FOR EARTHQUAKE CRISIS MANAGEMENT
Geographical information system (GIS) is a platform for
storage, maintenance, management and analysis of
geographic information and is designed to handle such data
which have spatial and descriptive nature simultaneously.
What makes data handling in GIS different from others is the
existence of spatial data. Moreover, because of very strong
user interface in GIS, it can be used for visualization of
explored knowledge. The GIS in recent years has emerged as
a powerful tool. It has integrated capabilities of spatial
analysis database management and graphic visualization and
has been widely adopted for building geotechnical expert
systems [12]. The GIS-based geotechnical expert systems
have been developed to forecast and reduce natural hazards
[13, 14].
Regarding the abilities of GIS in data mixing and
possibility of performance of complex analysis related to
spatial and non-spatial data, it is assumed to be the most
powerful tool in locating the most probable crisis happening
area. Gathering and utilization of spatial data related to the
current status of disaster in the shortest time, is one of
essential prerequisite of optimal earthquake management
[15].
With respect to specific application of GIS, especially in
earthquake crisis management analysis, enough flexibility
should be included in this system and help user to test
various models and theories. Used recorded other than
containing X and Y, should include multiple Z as well with
several attributes would be attached to each of them. This
characteristic enables GIS to create 3D data. Although the
abilities of CAD software to create spatial models are so
important, GIS applications need anisotropic networks,
whereas isotropic networks are used in CAD system.
Moreover, modeling in this system needs Kriging or other
kind of spatial interpolation algorithm of discrete data [16].
There are 3 software characteristics which are essential
for enough responding to earthquake GIS:
A GOOD CONNECTIVITY FOR OUTPUT ANALYTIC
MODELS
This ability is not only including accessibility and control
of database included in many systems, but also is the ability
of output models to access to spatial data with various
formats existing in many systems.
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Topologic relations such as VIClllity and connectivity
should be concerned for output models.
B 3D IMAGE CREATIONS: GIS SHOULD HAVE ABILITY
OF CREATION AND UTILIZATION OF MORE THAN TwO
DIMENSIONS
Nowadays, GIS software is under anisotropic
triangulation networks (TIN) which are responsible for some
needs in this part.
C GEOGRAPHICAL DATABASE MANAGEMENT:
Earthquake GIS should Have the Ability of
Incorporation of Raster and Vector Data and can Analyze,
Mix and Visualize Both Type of Data Simultaneously.
Management of large volume of digital data and digital
operations need management operation for storage, recovery
and updating datasets which is one of most important task in
GIS [15].
V. CONCLUSION
Advanced technology across remote sensing and
geographical information system and Sciences (GIS) are
becoming very powerful tools to manage natural disasters,
urban studies and etc. throughout day events in the world.
GIS be a platform to stores several layers of information
can attain the major part of goals in crisis management. By
executing spatial overlays, using logical relationship and
manipulation of over layer information certain decision can
be made. Overall, the application of GIS in crisis
management is making some proper decision based on valid
information in order to reduce damages and quick crisis
control.
Hence, not only scrutiny of past events but also other
systematic actions are seemed necessary in order to access
common elements in handling this kind of crisis.
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