by Dr. Sisi Zlatanova, senior researcher and lecturer at the GISt section, Delft University
Urban areas are complex conglomerates with a high density of people and infrastructure, and therefore decision-makers face great challenges when a disaster happens. Very recent man-made and natural disasters (for example, the bomb attack in London and the hurricane in New Orleans) have clearly shown numerous difficulties in coordinating the work of different teams and finding appropriate information. Who is involved in the rescue/relief operations? Where are particular temporary camps? Who has information? Where is the information? Who is responsible for it? How reliable is it? What is the accuracy? How to get it? How to interpret it? These are only a few of the questions that need to be answered before making decisions and giving orders. This article offers a hypothetical system architecture for emergency response in urban areas, and describes its characteristics.
Background – The Challenge
Emergency situations in urban areas require: 1) excellent coordination between different relief/rescue groups; 2) appropriate information (especially geo-referenced information); and 3) intelligence in communicating orders and information to different participants.
Emergency response involves many people: rescue teams on the field, decision-makers at different levels of government, citizens, press (Zlatanova 2005 and Winter et. al. 2005). Their tasks, and therefore their data needs, vary drastically from making decision to just following the development of the situation. Good collaboration and understanding is needed at each level, and is critical for units and institutions involved directly in managing the emergency (e.g. field workers and high-level decision makers). Most countries have clear, defined, well written and structured agreements regarding responding to disasters but, sad to say, these are not always successfully implemented in real situations. The problem deepens in cases of cross-boarder operations, where teams from different countries should be able to act as one unit (such as the VIKING project for contingency management of high water). …
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