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ReliefWeb and GeoEye Foundation: Maps and Data for Humanitarian Emergencies and Disasters
posted by Satri
on Friday March 30, @09:32AM
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from the mapping-for-a-cause dept.
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from the mapping-for-a-cause dept.
I recently rediscovered ReliefWeb, which provides maps for humanitarian emergencies and disasters. Several maps are published every day. From their about: "ReliefWeb is the world’s leading on-line gateway to information (documents and maps) on humanitarian emergencies and disasters. An independent vehicle of information, designed specifically to assist the international humanitarian community in effective delivery of emergency assistance, it provides timely, reliable and relevant information as events unfold, while emphasizing the coverage of "forgotten emergencies" at the same time." Closely related, the GeoCarta blog tells us GeoEye has formed a non-profit organization to give away satellite imagery for educational and humanitarian uses. Use Here's the press release.
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ReliefWeb and GeoEye Foundation: Maps and Data for Humanitarian Emergencies and Disasters
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Sahana
(Score:3, Informative)What is more important though, is actually having GIS incorporated into a disaster management information system. Maps are nice, but you need a framework to manage the disaster data, manage the map making process, and linking to the relevant attribute data.
A volunteer effort I'm involved in is Sahana [sahana.lk] - which is a free and open source disaster management system that came out of Sri Lanka following the tsunami in 2004. Right now we are at the formative stages of adding spatial capabilities to the software. Eventually we want to end up with a system that has something like MapServer and PostGIS integrated right into it and is used to publish spatial data via OGC standards.
The GeoEye effort could be useful if some of that data could be bundled with a Sahana installation.
This sort of dynamic service will be far more useful to those involved in the sharp end of responding to a disaster!
Cheers Gav