Mobile Gis Application Development For Emergency Damage Assessment In A Disaster

The magnitude 6.8 Niigata Chuetsu earthquake occurred on October 23, 2004. A major responsibility of cities in Japan hit by earthquakes is to conduct effective disaster relief while assessing the changing situation. On such assessment requiring large numbers of temporary workers is damage assessment, e.g., of buildings and lifelines. We organized emergency damage investigation, unifying damage investigation and post investigation information processing based on knowledge from GIS-based support by the Kyoto University's Disaster-prevention Research Institute. The two-part effort consisted of easy-input GIS applications and technology handling information from field damage investigation, automated geographic information and photographic association at disaster sites and creating reports on investigation results. We thus streamlined emergency damage investigation in aiding affected areas.