International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XXXIX-B4, 2012
XXII ISPRS Congress, 25 August — 01 September 2012, Melbourne, Australia
WEB MAPPING SERVICES IN A CROWDSOURCE ENVIRONMENT FOR DISASTER
MANAGEMENT: STATE-OF-THE-ART AND FURTHER DEVELOPMENT
Piero Boccardo *, Paolo Pasquali °
* Politecnico di Torino, DIST (Dipartimento Interateneo Di Scienze, Progetto e Politiche Del Territorio),
viale Matteoli 39, 10125 Torino, Italy — piero.boccardo@polito.it
® ITHACA Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action,
via P.C. Boggio 61, 10139 Torino, Italy — paolo.pasquali@ithaca.polito.it
ISPRS and OGC: Open Geospatial Consortium Forum
KEY WORDS: GIS, Impact Analysis, Interoperability, Mapping, Spatial Infrastructures, Web based
ABSTRACT:
The Haiti earthquake in 2010 has been considered a turning point in disaster response because of the support provided by
collaborative communities such as OpenStreetMap, Ushahidi, CrisisMappers, Google MapMaker and others. Taking advantage of
post-disaster satellite imagery these virtual communities were able to give an impressive contribution in mapping affected areas and
in damage assessment. Nowadays the crowd sourcing, whether made of experts or not, can play an important role in preparedness
and disaster response. In recent years the increase of web applications’ capabilities have enabled more efficient crowd sourcing of
environmental data. The most successful integration of tools and data between organizations, institutions or even individuals,
happens when the most open standards for interoperability are adopted, such as Web Mapping Services and Web Feature Services,
defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium. In order to be widely accepted, the applications should be likely open source. It is
unlikely that a single platform can fit every need or terms of use can be broadly accepted (e.g. data ownership). Therefore some
organizations could prefer having more control on the application by downloading and running it as their own shared data repository
and possibly as a hub for external contributors. Nevertheless, other users could prefer to access to a hosted site where they can
simply upload and share their contributions. This paper will illustrate the GeoNode open source application and the principles behind
the developing of a community. GeoNode is an example of how an application can be use as a global platform or as a distributed data
node to promote the collaborative use of spatial data.
1. A MAJOR DISASTER RESPONSE For the first time the affected population, thanks to the
dissemination of mobile phones in the country, alerted the crisis
responders where help was needed by typing basic text
messages for free thanks to the Mission 4636 initiative
(http://Www.mission4636.org/). In the first month volunteers
helped translate SMS written in Haitian Creole (Kreyol), geo-
located 2900 of them and transmitted the delivered messages to
the Red-Cross guiding search-and-rescue teams. Information
was also gathered through social media (blogs, Twitter and
Facebook), aggregated with text messages and shared using the
Ushahidi platform, an open source software first developed in
Kenya to monitor local elections in 2007.
Moreover volunteer mappers helped to create what has been
1.1 The 2010 Haiti earthquake
One of the key factors for the success of emergency operations
is the access to updated and reliable reference datasets. They are
the basic geographic framework on top of which additional
spatial information (e.g. affected areas, damage assessment) can
be produced and disclosed in order to help decision makers and
field staff plan disaster response operations.
The 7.0 M,, earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, 2010,
with an epicentre near the capital Port-au-Prince, affected three
million people killing more than 200,000 (according to
government estimate). It was also reported that more than
1,000,000 people were made homeless and 250,000 poorly
constructed residences and 30,000 commercial buildings
collapsed or were severely damaged. One of the most
devastating disasters of the last decades hit the poorest Western
hemisphere country making more difficult the jobs of rescuers
and aid workers by the lack of information about the layout of
Port-au-Prince. After years of UN involvement in Haiti, all the
data collected, such as road networks, health facilities,
demographics and locations, were lost in the disaster and their
curators tragically missing.
1.2 The Haiti emergency response
The Haiti earthquake in 2010 has been considered a turning
point in disaster response because of the support provided by
collaborative communities.
considered as the most comprehensive and up-to-date map
available of Port-au-Prince and Haiti. This achievement was
made possible by the collaboration between volunteers and data
providers.
High-resolution imagery (with ground sample distance below
1m) has not traditionally been available at the field level early.
For the response of the tsunami that heavily hit Banda Aceh in
Indonesia in 2004, the collected imagery was made available to
field staff three weeks after the event occurred (Crowley J. et
al, 2010). Imagery can be critical for making operational
decisions, especially in regards to logistics. But imagery also is
time consuming to process and analyse, a task for which field
staff can't accomplish in little time.
In the Haiti case, imagery was released as soon as it was
available. Only 26 hours after the quake a GeoEye/Google
partnership released under "attribution only" high resolution
imagery of the disaster and Digital Globe soon followed. In
addition the Disaster Risk Management group at the World
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