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- Measurement of snow packs depth beneath forest canopies 
(Hopkinson et al., 2004) 
- Pipeline mapping and safety applications (Tao and Hu, 2002). 
So far LIDAR surveys have been done over small areas because 
of their high cost. 
3. TYPICAL EMERGENCY MAPPING NEEDS 
3.1] Emergency situations and gco-spatial data sets 
There are many situations that can be considered as an 
“emergency”. In the last decade in Canada, most of these 
situations were gencrated by natural disasters as the flooding in 
Manitoba and in the Saguenay region (Quebec), the ice storm in 
Québec and Eastern Ontario, large forest fires and the hurricane 
in Atlantic Canada. Other natural disasters are possible as 
carthquakes, tsunamis and massive landslides. Environmental 
accidents are also possible and there are so many possible 
scenarios, from a ‘classical’ oil split to the worst toxically 
chemical or nuclear contamination. 
The number of ‘emergency possible scenarios’ will be 
dramatically multiplied if we consider all the possible trigger - 
events such as a traffic accident, a human error, a natural 
disaster (as a carthquake damaging a chemical plant) or an ‘act 
of war’ or a sabotage. In addition, the emergency services will 
have to take in consideration the specific local conditions such 
as the spatial distribution of the human population, the 
meteorological conditions, the availability of medical services, 
the access roads that are in service, availability and location of 
possible shelter places, etc. It appears that a large variety of 
situations could result from all these possible emergency 
situations and the specific needs could be different from case to 
case. However, some gencral trends can be seen. 
For the needs of the present paper. we will use the term of 
"emergency services" for the authorities in charge to deal with 
an ‘emergency situation’. From the point of view of a geomatics 
professional, it appears that in almost all situations, the 
emergency services will have to deal with: 
- 8 variety of geo-spatial data sets (as the city plan, 
evacuation routes; map of electrical & water networks, 
etc.) that have to be consulted repeatedly 
- Almost all the new information received as result of the 
emergency situation has a direct or indirect gco-spatial 
component (examples: location of the accident/disaster, 
location and extension of damages, location of victims, 
position of traffic obstacles, closed road segments, 
collapsed bridges, location of shelters, ete, etc.) 
- The geo-spatial component has to be considered and 
integrated in order to conduct the recovering operations. 
The emergency services will have to be trained to use modern 
gcomatics tools for the manipulation and the integration of the 
geospatial information described above. 
An “Emergency Mapping’ group should exist at the 
£overnmental level for the preparation of typical ‘emergency 
mapping products’, for the training of local emergency services 
about the use of ‘emergency mapping products’ and the 
integration of other geospatial products and information. 
32 Typical emergency mapping needs 
The emergency services will use maps and a variety of 
geospatial information for their main tasks. We can consider the 
following list of typical mapping / gco-spatial data needs in the 
969 
case of an emergency situation triggered by a (simulated) 
chemical accident: 
3.2.1 Reconnaissance purposes: 
- Emergency situation acknowledgement and primary 
localization: The first communication about the accident 
could be just a phone call but it will already contain a 
geospatial component with the location of the accident 
(example: “It was an explosion followed by a fire at the 
chemical plant at the address 123 on Acid Street”). 
- Disaster understanding and primary damage evaluation: 
The fire department will locate the fire on their map (or 
GIS system). The fire department will evaluate the 
situation ad will trigger the Emergency Services and will 
give the first estimation about the dangers for the local 
population. In some situations it could be very useful for 
the situation understanding to get some airborne digital 
imagery. Some police departments are already equipped 
with visible and infrared digital cameras (vidco or frame 
based) and are using them onboard helicopters. 
3.3.2 Monitoring purposes: 
- Disaster evaluation and dvnamic estimation of the danger for 
human population: The emergency services will have to 
integrate a variety of information from specialists about the 
toxicity of the released substance, from the meteorological 
services (wind direction, intensity and forecast) for the 
definition of the evacuation area and from the own 
topographic data for the distribution of residential areas, 
schools, hospitals, potential shelters etc inside the 
evacuation area and in the neighbourhood region. 
Alternative road access should be defined. Airborne or 
satellite high-resolution imagery could be very useful for 
these tasks. Important decision will be made after the 
integration of all those pieces of information, all having a 
geospatial component. 
- Supervision and monitoring of rescue/recovery operations: 
As the situation can change continuously with possible 
extension of the evacuation area, the Emergency Services 
have to update again and again the information. There is a 
need for a kind of ‘dynamic map” to keep track of all these 
changes. 
3.2.3 Damage assessments and reconstruction planning: 
Damage assessment: there is a need of detailed mapping of the 
disaster area and change detection operations by comparing 
with the situation just before the event. It could be very 
important to record digital pictures over the disaster area from 
the beginning and during the rescue / recovery operations as by 
their nature, such operations could include the demolition of the 
damaged buildings and/or industrial facilitics. The same images 
could be used for others tasks (disaster understanding, 
monitoring of rescue operations, and others). For an immediate 
use in ‘Disaster understanding and primary damage 
evaluation’ for example, immediate access to the data is 
important and no precise geo-referencing is mandatory. 
However, true ortho-images will help for recovery operations 
and other tasks as ‘post mortem’ precise damage assessment. 
3.3 Typical problems for the Emergency Mapping Group 
ency Mapping Group, all 
ection could be described 
From the point of view of the Emer 
the needs described in the previous 
as two main mapping problems: 
a 
e 
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