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