Article Preview
TopIntroduction
Reliable information is an essential prerequisite for crisis-related decision making and effective disaster management. Today, the added value of geoinformation for crisis management in the form of a map is well known and accepted (Voigt et al., 2007). Visualising information on a map makes it more understandable than spreadsheets or reports. Maps – often based on satellite imagery – are used to provide updated information in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Applications include amongst others situation assessment, evacuation planning, damage assessment, reconstruction monitoring, as well as risk and vulnerability analysis (Voigt et al., 2007). The provision of maps supports efficient decision making and hence is an important part of effective disaster response. The map providers are typically highly specialised organisations dealing with geoinformation issues or national civilian or defence mapping authorities. The move from reactive map provision to more anticipative systems, based on preparatory mapping of ‘hotspots' is consistently discussed within the geo-related disaster community. This can be achieved by enhancing capacities in affected countries in using geospatial information to support the full disaster management cycle. This is for example the mission of the United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response - UN-SPIDER (2009). However, the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the software that is typically used for map making is still not widely implemented in humanitarian organisations nor at local or regional disaster management authorities, not only in developing countries (ISIS, 2003; Verjee, 2007).
Several reasons are brought up in this context: high investment cost is often mentioned as a constraint for using GIS effectively (Tanser & le Sueur, 2002). This can partly be invalidated as decreasing costs of hardware and mass storage facilitate the use of information technologies. Due to a large community, the development of open source geospatial tools has increased in recent years. Nevertheless, their use leaves a number of obstacles, which might be poor documentation, the need for training, and difficulties of configuring or extending open source solutions. An important factor, which must not be forgotten, is the high cost of data (Currion, 2006; Tanser & le Sueur, 2002). Both commercial datasets and the acquisition and digitization of data by the end user might be substantial expense factors especially with increasing accuracy of the data. The more accurate data are available the better can be the decisions drawn on the basis of this data. Another reason not conducive for the implementation is the comprehensive knowledge required to use today’s GIS packages. In addition Taylor (1991) argues exemplary on India that not technical problems are the major barriers to the development of GIS but bureaucratic and political factors. According to Currion (2009) the humanitarian community is slow in adapting new technologies due to the fact that technology is not their main focus and they have failed to identify how these technologies can save their resources.
Geographic information technologies made great progress also influenced by the development and provision of virtual globes, such as Google Earth™, Microsoft® Virtual Earth™, Nasa World Wind or ArcGIS® Explorer. Even if their options for geospatial analysis are limited, their introduction influenced the GIS domain, and brought it forward from exclusive, expensive, and technocratic tools towards geographic information platforms available for non-geospatial experts and due to their availability free of charge to the mass market (Miller, 2006; Sui, 2008). The integration and accessibility of worldwide high resolution satellite data, their intuitive user interface, and the ability to integrate own data combined together with a high performance support their success.