Gi4DM: Raising Multidisciplinary Awareness

The first International Symposium on Geo-information for Disaster Management (Gi4DM) was held at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands from 21st to 23rd March 2005. More than three hundred participants from 59 countries and all continents attended this meeting.

This inaugural symposium was held with the aim of improving understanding of the geospatial requirements and problems associated with environmental, natural and technical disasters. More specifically, the symposium wanted to;

• establish what was the state of the art in disaster management
  
• review tools, software, existing geo-information sources, organisational structures and methods for working in crisis situations
  
• outline drawbacks in current use, discovery, integration and exchange of geo-information
  
• come up with suggestions for future research directions.

Because this was the first symposium of its kind and essentially exploratory in character, a multifaceted approach was chosen as an optimum strategy for raising awareness amongst many and often overlapping disciplines. Planned long in advance, the tragic events of the Tsunami on 26th December 2004 added an unintended dimension to the symposium.

Time, Space, Teamwork
Prof. Jacob Fokkema, rector of Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), opened the symposium, whilst host Prof. Peter van Oosterom outlined the symposium objectives. Prof. Michael Goodchild of the University of California, Santa Barbara stressed the critical factors of space and time in disaster management; disaster management was inherently a spatial problem, he said. Technologies for rapid data acquisition should thus be developed in conjunction with appropriate data models and new location-measuring methods. Dr Boudewijn Ambrosius (DEOS, TU Delft) presented the SEAMERGES project, an ASEAN-EU collaborative university network that registered the north-west Sumatra earthquake and the resulting tsunami in December 2004 by satellite altimeter and GPS systems. He told his audience how this project needed many more local GPS measuring points for more accurate and timely future tectonic movement prediction. Prof. Orhan Altan, ISPRS secretary-general, emphasised a future focus on global monitoring, pre-emptive information gathering and ever increasing international collaboration.

Differing Risks
Dr Cees van Westen of ITC presented the SLARIM project for strengthening the calamity-coping capabilities of medium-scale cities in developing countries. Dr Dusan Sakulski, University of the United Nations, highlighted features of the South African National Disaster Hazard and Vulnerability Atlas, evidencing how disaster measures are being developed in Africa. Dr von der Dunk, Leiden University, outlined legal aspects of disaster management and elaborated upon European initiatives such as the GMES project. Dr Karin Fabbri drew attention to European Commission (EC) activities such as INSPIRE, EU-MEDIN and IST, observing that interrelated risks of a differing nature were under-represented at the symposium.

Indonesian Viewpoint
NASA presented a variety of disaster initiatives, such as the Modis Rapid Reponse Process, vegetation monitoring, hurricane predictions and environmentally-related diseases such as malaria and filariasis in the Mekong River Delta in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Other initiatives outlined involved air quality, such as the Asian Dust and Microbes Long-range Transport project, invasive species management, and research into aerosols, clouds and radiation. The challenges ahead according to NASA were to understand the relationships between processes affecting the sun, the Earth and life in general. Dr Dudung Hakim of the University of Technology in Bandung, Indonesia, discussed the role of universities, describing the serious lack of any National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) in his country; without a proper NSDI, Gi4DM was useless, he declared. The Joint Research Centre of the European Union (ISPRA) is now assisting the Indonesian authorities to reconstruct the completely lost cadastre of Bandar Aceh, the city on Sumatra that was devastated by the Tsunami.

Other Developments
Prof. Andrea Fabbri, SPINLab Free Universtity of Amsterdam, presented criteria for geospatial information in terms of usefulness to Gi4DM. Risk maps could be generated in many ways to serve decision-makers but must in any case be based on validation of predicted hazards and express the certainty levels of risks. He remarked, significantly enough, that he had never seen risk maps whilst a disaster was occurring. Roland Haarbrink of Miramap discussed the capabilities of Airborne Passive Microwave Radiometry, a technology developed together with the European Space Agency (ESA) that enables fast production of soil-moisture maps of upper ground layers and water-table maps down to several meters over large areas. The technology has great potential for providing timely geospatial information to first responders in disaster operations.

Mitigating Action
The panel leading discussions comprised Prof. Orhan Altan (moderator) and representatives of UK-based emergency mapping agency MapAction, the German Space Agency and EC, whilst questions reflected upon included the following.

• Can we deliver appropriate, timely geo-information in the immediate aftermath of disaster? The answer was that the response and prevention phases should not be considered separately.
  
• Was the quality and accuracy of geo-information sufficient for disaster management? The answer depended upon who used geospatial information and the competence they showed.
  
• Were mechanisms in place to make use of the necessary scientific and technical expertise in the aftermath of a disaster? The short answer was negative. This issue should be one of the major themes of future research and symposia.
  
• Were geo-information scientists sufficiently involved in efforts to predict and prevent disasters and mitigate the effects? Geo-information scientists and rescue workers had to better understand one another and each other’s real needs. Both physical damage and loss of cultural heritage resulting from disaster had to be considered.

Although initially not planned, a modest exhibition was organised at the request of geomatics vendors. Bentley, ESRI and Intergraph were there, along with disaster geo-data management experts. Local vendors such as Nieuwland Consultants, CREASO and Octaaf Adviesgroep also presented products and services.

The Human Factor
In her concluding remarks, organiser Dr Zlatanova confirmed how instructive the three-day symposium had been concerning the many important aspects of disaster management. These included type and extent of disaster, the phase of disaster management and decision-making processes; also vital were availability of data and technology, existing and desired disaster management legislation and, above all, the human factor. Coming symposia should, she suggested, focus on the developmental aspects of technology for emergency response. The network of supporting organisations was now in place and Gi4DM 2005 in Delft might act as a reference for future symposia.

A provisional schedule for coming symposia looks as follows:
-2006, Goa, India
-2007, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
-2008, Beijing, China.

Dates will be provided at the ISPRS WG IV/8 website Spatial Data Integration for Emergency Services: www.isprs.org.
Papers for the symposium reported upon here are collected in Geo-information for Disaster Management, edited by van Oosterom, Zlatanova and Fendel, and published by Springer-Verlag, 2005. ISBN 3-540-24988-5, Library of Congress Control Number 2005 920463, see www.gdmc. nl/gi4dm.