CONCEPT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ARCHITECTURE FOR THE IMMEDIATE PROVISION OF GEODATA IN DISASTER MANAGEMENT

Abstract. Statistics prove that the number of disasters, especially weather-related, increased during the last decades. This leads to high demands on participants in disaster management processes. To meet these requirements the provision of geodata, as a part of the information base, plays a key role. A preliminary theoretical consideration points out the evaluation of the benefits of geodata in disaster scenarios as well as the requirements for the provision of geoinformation products and systems in this field of application. There already exist several approaches that differ in the used data, the functionalities or the concept in general.

As an alternative, this work introduces a new architectural concept of immediate geodata provision for disaster management based on the usage of free data and free software components. A system consisting of several free software components forms the basis of this approach. With vector data from OpenStreetMap and remote sensing data from the United States Geological Survey a batch script driven geoinformation system creates map tiles or images for end-users in disaster management within minutes.