The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol. XXXVII. Part B4. Beijing 2008 
biological, nuclear, fire, transport accidents, power failures, 
explosions, etc pose a serious threat to the nation’s economic 
growth and loss of lives 
Government of India has brought about a change in policy 
which emphasis mitigation, prevention and preparedness in the 
disaster management. The new approach proceeds from the 
conviction that development cannot be sustainable unless 
disaster mitigation and preparedness are built into the 
development process. Another comer stone of the approach is 
that mitigation, prevention and preparedness for emergency 
management has to be multi-disciplinary spanning across all 
sectors of development. The new policy also emanates from the 
belief that investments in mitigation, prevention and 
preparedness are much more cost effective than expenditure on 
relief and rehabilitation. 
This approach has been translated into a National Disaster 
Framework covering institutional mechanisms, disaster 
prevention strategy, early warning system, disaster mitigation, 
preparedness and response and human resource development. 
The expected inputs, areas of intervention and agencies to be 
involved at the National, State and district levels have been 
identified and listed in the roadmap. This roadmap has been 
shared with all the State Governments and Union Territory 
Administrations. Ministries and Departments of Government of 
India, and the State Govemments/UT Administrations have 
been advised to develop their respective roadmaps taking the 
national roadmap as a broad guideline. Now, there is a common 
strategy underpinning the action being taken by all the 
participating organizations/stakeholders. It was strongly 
recommended that GIS/digital database of States/districts and 
urban centres with spatial and non-spatial data at appropriate 
scales has to be developed along with spatial decision support 
tools for emergency response. 
1.2 Emergency Management Concept 
Emergency can arise due to disaster caused by a technology or 
natural process. Emergency response needs rapid decisions in 
short time. Modem approaches to emergency management and 
response involve multidimensional efforts to reduce our 
vulnerability to hazards; to diminish the impact of disasters; and 
to prepare for, respond to, and recover from those that occur. 
The paramount goal of disaster management activities is to 
reduce, as much as possible, the degree to which a community’s 
condition is worsened by a disaster relative to its pre-disaster 
condition. There are many actions undertaken by participants in 
disaster management that support this goal both pre-disaster (to 
forestall or reduce potential damage) and post-disaster (to 
recover from actual damage), and ideally these activities would 
reduce the potential effects of a disaster. Disasters are uncertain 
with respect to both their occurrences and their outcomes. 
Disasters of rapid-onset type such as earthquakes harm a high 
percentage of the jurisdiction’s property or population, and 
damage occurs quickly relative to the jurisdiction’s ability to 
avert or avoid it. They may also directly impact the resources 
and personnel available to respond. As a result, response to 
disasters evokes a profound sense of urgency, and coping with 
them drains a jurisdiction’s human resources, equipment, 
supplies, and funds. All disasters have a temporal and 
geographic footprint that identifies the duration of impact and 
its extent on the Earth’s surface. The geospatial data for 
emergency management has its significant importance. Data 
required for different kind of emergency range from spatial to 
attribute data. However, for technological disasters, required 
spatial information range from 1:10,000 to 1:2000, depending 
upon the kind of disaster that occurs. The emergency database 
can be developed on the basis of an object-oriented database 
design approach that proceeds from data collection, processing, 
organization and sharing through centralized data repository. 
There is an enormous amount of geospatial data of all kinds and 
often may hard to find the right data at the right moment by the 
people who needs the information for rescue work and recovery 
operations. Using geospatial tools, responders can determine 
where impacts are greatest, locate damaged buildings or injured 
residents so that they are able to act more quickly, especially 
during the critical period immediately after the event when 
there is the greatest possibility of saving lives (Committee on 
Planning for Catastrophe, 2007). If pre-incident data are 
available, geospatial analysis can provide important insight into 
the nature and extent of changes wrought by disasters. 
Geospatial models can help predict the locations, footprints, 
times, and durations of events, and the damage they may cause, 
so that jurisdictions can better prepare for them. Considering 
the importance to address the emergency management, 
Department of Space, Government of India envisaged a 
programme for development of geospatial database at various 
scales along with decision support tools with multi-institutional 
support. This database, which will leverage much on the 
aerospace data, will have core data, hazard-specific data, and 
dynamic data in spatial as well as non-spatial forms. The 
proposed geospatial database will deliver the necessary 
information in time to the key players by adopting the latest 
developments in computer science and networking technologies. 
The required system configuration and network design using 
state of art technology is envisaged keeping in view of the 
functional requirements. The architecture incorporates the 
necessary features like multi-core/ multi-processor systems, 
high-end storage and network devices to ensure good system 
response even with the overhead of additional security levels. A 
prototype decision support system was developed for certain 
emergencies arise out of natural disasters such as floods. It 
consists of generic display & query module to facilitate display 
of spatial & non-spatial data, identification of attribute 
information, overlays, simple thematic queries etc. besides 
analysis module catering to the specific needs pertaining to 
emergency management such as impact assessment, relief 
organization etc. 
2. DEVELOPMENT OF GEOSPATIAL DATABASE 
Much of the information that is required for emergency 
preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation including 
resources allocation involve geospatial information. Different 
information technologies are appropriate in the various phases 
of the disaster management life cycle (Committee on Using 
Information Technology to Enhance Disaster Management, 
National Research Council, 2005) Imagine a world in which 
geospatial information is available to all who need it (and who 
have permission to use it) in a timely fashion, with a user 
friendly interface (Committee on Intersections Between 
Geospatial Information and Information Technology, National 
Research Council, 2003). More specifically, technologies 
should be devised that can help individuals and groups access 
information, visually explore, analyse and take appropriate 
decisions. It is clear that despite excellent efforts by many 
groups the approach to providing information for emergency 
management is not often effectively utilizing a wealth of data 
that resides, with various organizations. Available Information 
and capacity is not uniform, consistent and standardized for