GIS applications in emergency planning and management have mirrored the development of GIS more broadly: early developments were carried out on single machines within separate agencies, and data and information sharing was partial and difficult to achieve. Recent developments have seen statutory, technological and organisational shifts towards the integration of practice and systems that support that; legislation has clarified rights, roles, responsibilities and requirements to share data; partnerships and protocols have promoted this and the increasing mobility of data within systems and organisations, underpinned by transfer formats, common standards, open systems, metadata and web-services have permitted the development of integrated information for decision-making. Future
developments will build on integration of data, systems and processes in the development of interoperable data, systems and processes that effectively remove the need for manual
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interventions to transmit data and information between organisations. The principles, both technical and operational, of interoperability are established (and embedded in the principles of e-government in the UK) and the technical enablers are all proven. It will now require vision and leadership to realise the gains.
Appendix 1: Glossary of Terms
Backdrop Mapping
Maps such as those at 1:250k, 50k, 25k or 10k from the Ordnance Survey which are used in a GIS for the purposes of context and orientation rather than any direct analytical applications. Such maps are usually in raster format.
Framework Mapping
Spatial datasets which allow attributes to be spatially referenced. For example, a list of properties that has no direct spatial identifier but which contains an Ordnance Survey Address Point Reference (OSAPR) can be spatially located and then mapped by linking to the Ordnance Survey Address Point dataset. Similarly census data, or indeed any dataset that uses census units such as Wards and Output Areas, can be mapped by linking to the framework map of census boundaries.
Geo-referencing
Geo-referencing describes the process of linking records or datasets that are not in themselves geographical (e.g. social service records or details of chemicals stored in tankers) to a spatial dataset, enabling them to be mapped.
Usually this requires that a common link between the records and a framework map is identified. This may be a postcode, Ward identifier or OSAPR, although specific pieces of geo-referencing software are increasingly sophisticated as what is termed ‘fuzzy matching’, enabling less precise locational attributes such as ‘near North Street’ to be mapped.
Hotlinking
This is the process of linking files to locations. Usually it refers to files other than the standard table of attributes, for instance graphics files, external databases, word documents, hyperlinks or movie files. An example of a hotlinked file could be a jpeg file which illustrates the feature under normal operating conditions. A field worker could access this to ascertain whether any changes or alterations had taken place.
Large Scale Maps
A large scale map is one of a relatively small area that shows a large amount of detail. Some people find this confusing, expecting a large scale map to be one of a large area, but this is not the case – they are termed large scale as 1:5,000 is a larger fraction of 1 than, for instance, 1:250,000.
Metadata Metadata are information about data. See section 8.3.
Raster data Spatial data that are stored as a matrix of values in a grid of defined resolution. See Box 5.
Resolution
Resolution has a number of different dimensions in the context of spatial data.
At a generic level it refers to the dimensions of the building blocks of a dataset. So, spatial resolution describes the size of the components of the dataset. In this context it is most applicable to raster data where the pixel size defines the spatial resolution. The temporal resolution of a dataset describes the level of aggregation of time periods in a dataset.
Small Scale Maps
A small scale map is one of a relatively large area that shows a limited amount of detail. Some people find this confusing, expecting a small scale map to be one of a small area, but this is not the case – they are termed small scale as 1:250,000 is a smaller fraction of 1 than, for instance, 1:5,000.
Thematic Maps
Thematic maps can be distinguished from backdrop maps, as they are maps of a specific dataset rather than general topographic maps for the purposes of context and orientation. A thematic map, for example, could be census data describing the distribution of children aged less than 14 in an area or the distribution and attributes of COMAH sites in a District.
Vector Data Spatial data that are stored as points, lines or areas. See Box 5.
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Appendix 2: Annotated Bibliography of Key Readings Books
There are relatively few accessible books on the subject. The most widely available are:
Amdahl, G. (2001). Disaster Response: GIS for Public Safety, ESRI Press, Redlands.
Greene, R.W. (2002). Confronting Catastrophe: A GIS Handbook, ESRI Press, Redlands.
These suffer from being (a) almost exclusively US focused, and (b) being from the publisher associated with a particular GIS developer, so a rather skewed view of the whole field is offered.
Briggs, D.J., Forer, P., Jarup, L. and Stern, R. (Eds) (2002). GIS for Emergency
Preparedness and Health Risk Reduction, NATO Science Series IV: Earth & Environmental Sciences, Kluwer, Dordrecht.
This is an edited collection rather than an authored book so consequently the development of themes is not as strong. However, it is an effective and broad ranging collection that is perhaps of greater relevance to those with interests in public health.
Cutter, S. L., Richardson, D.B. and Wilbanks, T.J. (Eds) (2003). Geographical Dimensions of Terrorism, Routledge, London.
This book appears to be rather misleadingly titled but the content is in fact a very effective overview of a series of key issues, both technical and application-related. Again, it is almost entirely US-focused in its scope.
Van Oosterom, P., Zlatanova,S. and Fendel, E.M (Eds) (2005). Geo-information for disaster management, Springer, Berlin.
This is an extensive edited collection, with a series of papers that are relatively specific and with a strong technical flavour.
Gatrell, A. and Loytonen M. (Eds) (1998). GIS and Health, Taylor & Francis, London.
Although this is no longer a very recent book it remains an excellent collection on health- applications of GIS.
Journal Articles
The academic journals contain a significant amount of papers on various aspects of GIS and emergency planning and management. This ranges from applications in complex
emergencies in the developing world through to very specific aspects of data models, interoperable systems and analytical tools. Few of these will be of interest to a wider
audience and many such papers have been synthesised and referenced in footnotes, in the writing of this guide, although the following are a starting point in any further exploration:
Cutter, S.L. (2003). GI Science, Disasters and Emergency Management, Transactions in GIS, 7(4), 439-445.
Dymon, U.J. (2003) An analysis of emergency map symbology, International Journal of Emergency Management, 1(3), 227-237.