The Fifth International Symposium on Gi4DM
03 Mar 2009

 

 

The Fifth International Symposium on Gi4DM was jointly organized by the ICA Working Group on "Cartography in Early Warning and Crisis Management" (CEW&CM) and the Ad-hoc Committee on "Risk and Disaster Management" in Prague, Czech Republic, 19-22 January 2009. The Symposium was supported by ISPRS, UNOOSA, ISDE, EC (JRC) and UNESCO. Milan Konecny, formal president of ICA and chair of ICA WG on CEW&CM, took the great responsibility to host this event in Central Europe, after several successful symposia in Canada, India and China.  

 

The ultimate goal of the Gi4DM symposium has always been to promote developments of geo-ICT in all phases of Risk and Disaster Management by:

• reviewing tools, software, existing geo-information sources, organizational structures and methods for work in crisis situations,
• outlining drawbacks in current use, discovery, integration and exchange of geo-information, and
• making suggestions for future research directions.

 

In 2008, the symposium was recognized as a major event of the Ad-hoc Committee on "Risk and Disaster management" within the Joint Board of Geographical Information Societies (JB GIS), chaired by Orhan Altan. This is an important happening, which intends at better coordination of the activities on disaster management between the different geo-societies. 

The 5^th Gi4DM symposium concentrated on "Cartography and Geo-informatics for Early Warning and Emergency management". Geo-informatics techniques have already proven that they could significantly facilitate emergency management. In the last years a great number of projects, initiatives and activities were funded at national and international level towards providing better tools for risk and disaster management. Despite the obvious progress, there are still many topics that remain to be addressed. One of them is the presentation of information to emergency responders and disaster managers. Early warning and emergency management require presentations, which can reflect work under stress. The systems have to be user-centered and user-friendly and ensure that every person (professional or citizen) receives the information that will help him/her to avoid losses of life and damages of critical infrastructures. Cartography can greatly help in the presentation of data by adapting the visualization with respect to the context of the user and enhancing the decision-making process with visual analytics and simulations. 

 

The presentations and discussions were centered on the following topics: frameworks and tools, technologies and infrastructures, citizens in early warning and emergency response, and cartographic and geo-informatics applications. The four days symposium included 8 keynotes in plenary sessions, 18 oral parallel sessions, a poster session, three sponsor presentations, a meeting of the Ad-hoc Committee on "Risk and Disaster Management", a round-table on "Spatially Enabled Early Warning and Emergency Management", a meeting of the ICA Commission on "Education and Training", a meeting of the ICA Commission on "Cartography and Children" as well as a vendor exhibition, an exhibition of the children's "Barbara Petchenik" competition in the Czech Republic and numerous social activities. The symposium was attended by 145 participants from 34 countries with representatives from all the 6 continents. 79 papers were accepted for the symposium as oral presentation or poster. A selected number of papers will be included in a Springer book "Geographic Information and Cartography in Crises Management: towards better solution" (working title).

 

The symposium was opened by Petr Fiala, the Rector of the Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic followed by welcome speeches by Ivan Langer (Minister of Interior), Ondrej Liska (Minister of Education, Youth and Sport), Michal Hasek (Governor of South Moravia Region), Jan Duben (Ministry of Industry and Trade), Veronica Nedeverova (President NEMOFORUM), Pavel Skoda (Secretary General, Czech Commision for UNESCO), Orhan Altan (President ISPRS), Mark Reichardt (President OGC), Sisi Zlatanova (ISPRS, WGIV/8), Miroslav Mikovsovsky (Czech Cartographic Society) and Milan Konecny (ICA WG on CEW&CM).

 

The first day was devoted to the opening ceremony followed by a session with keynote speakers. Alessandro Annoni (Head of the SDI Unit at JRC) provided an extended overview on activities, projects and developments completed or in progress toward development of an Earth Observation Infrastructure. He emphasized on the need for data harmonization and highlighted the importance of coordinate systems transformations, which are critical for managing floods (43% of the disasters in Europe). Virginia Puzzolo (EC officer of GMES) presented the broad range of activities within GMES in support of emergency management. Jiri Sedivi (General, former commander of the General Staff of the Czech Army) outlined in an excellent way the needs of the end-users. He emphasized on the importance of cooperation and communication, need of realistic information ("bad information is better than no information"), recognized the need of systems that allow for a daily use (not only during crisis) and which ensure a good situational awareness, stressed that the time is a critical component in emergency situations. Andor Sandor (former Chief of Military Intelligence Service of Czech Republic) gave an inspiring speech on various aspects of security.

 

Four keynotes speeches were given in the remaining three days. Orhan Altan elaborated on the power of remote sensors for early warning, monitoring and damage assessment. Giving various examples, he demonstrated convincingly the progress made by researchers and developers in providing timely satellite and aerial images, laser scanning and other sensor measurements, supplying robust approaches for change detection and damage assessment. Wolfgang Kainz (President of the Austrian Cartographic Association) discussed the historical developments within GIS and elaborated on the importance of models, modeling and spatial analysis. He outlined the future challenges to GIS as modularization, open systems and technologies, and meta-data. Mark Reichardt presented activities of OGC in developing standards and services for seamless exchange of geo-information, demonstrated some of the very successful test phases devoted to integration of data for emergency response and addressed future developments towards third dimension, semantic/ontology, business intelligence and mobile internet. Milan Konecny concentrated on the importance of cartography in any phase of risk and disaster management. He recommended more attention on building SDI in Europe, anticipating its importance for early warning.

 

During the symposium two basic types of presentations could be recognized: the ones with more focus on research and development of geo-information technology, and the ones with more focus on the practical needs and solutions for users and disaster managers. Several presentations were directly related to applications developed for specific countries in South Asia, South America and Europe, discussing availability of data, collecting of information from citizens, damages in different regions and the help provided by international and national geo-organizations. Several papers concentrated on open services and technology, allowing for relatively fast employment. The number of papers on cartographic topics increased significantly in comparison with previous editions of Gi4DM. A number of papers concentrated on user interfaces, usability investigations, types of visualization appropriate for work under stress, etc.

 

     

 

JB GIS Ad-hoc Committee on "Risk and Disaster Management"

 

The symposium hosted two important events: a working meeting of the Ad-hoc Committee on "Risk and Disaster Management" and a round-table. Representatives of ISPRS, ICA and CODATA discussed the mission and the program of the Committee for the coming two years. All the societies within the JB GIS have appointed their representatives for the Committee. Orhan Altan (Chair of the Committee) presented the mission of the Committee as a decision and decision support forum based on the knowledge and experience of related experts of the JB GIS members to gain htrough benefit from multi-dialog with other groups working on similar topics and as well as supporting the on-site working teams by recommendations and updated technologies. To be able to achieve this, the Ad-hoc Committee will work at two levels: Gi4DM symposia and Ad-hoc Committee Meetings.  The ultimate goal of the Ad- hoc Committee is a Declaration of the "JB GIS Common Communiqué on Disaster Management". This "Common Communiqué" aims to inform and alert the decision makers of the consequences of not being prepared appropriately by using risk management techniques and at the same time show the best  practice examples identified by the JB GIS Members. The Declaration aims to assist governments, local authorities, and other stakeholders concerned with natural hazards in potentially vulnerable areas. The Committee will work closely with other organizations and institutions that have similar agendas such as the CODATA Working Group on Documentation, Archiving and Open Access to Disaster Information, GMES, etc.

 

The Round-table was chaired by Gottfried Konecny (Professor at the University of Hanover). Discussion was opened by Milan Konecny who addressed various challenges in early warning and emergency response and defined priorities for research and developments as:

• developing of ontology and semantic for early warning and vulnerability mapping,
• building of SDI across countries and continents,
• extended use of cartography in presentation of information,
• visual analysis and simulation techniques for monitoring and prediction.

 

The 10 members (Paulo Menezes, Soleil Beaulieu, Mark Reichard, Virginia Puzzolo, Sisi Zlatanova, Gottfried Konecny, Wolfgang Kainz, Orhan Altan, Milan Konecny, Kristi Virrantaus) of the Round-table were encouraged, on basis of their experience and background, to formulate in three minutes the most important aspects of technologies for early warning and emergency response. The addressed challenges can be grouped as follows:

• further technology developments,
• sharing of information between systems, domains and countries,
• political, legal and administrative support.

Mark Reichardt has pointed out that representation of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, South America and Africa in OGC is still insufficient and invited industries and academia to work closely on more applied research. Representatives of EU and GMES have addressed users. Much information is already collected at various institutions and organizations and it should be made available to the user in the most appropriate way, i.e. user-centric systems have to be developed. Sisi Zlatanova addressed emerging technology issues such as semantics and transition to 3D/4D systems. Wolfgang Kainz emphasized on the information sharing between different domains and the importance of dialog with the politicians. Only when the politicians get seriously involved in disaster management activities, the technology can be properly implemented and used. Orhan Altan developed further the topic and emphasized that the scientific language of the researchers has to be translated to the politicians and suggested that this can be done by collecting and demonstrating the best practice to them. Milan Konecny  concentrated on the presentation of information to people working under stress and recommended close contacts with psychologists, while developing user interfaces.

 

         

 

Round-table

 

The Roundtable has recognized the need of further work on systems for early warning and emergency response due to increased frequency of natural disasters as a result of weather anomalies, global warming and various humanitarian and industrial disasters. Technology keeps improving and many systems are available, which allow access to various types of data via open standards (and the Web). The visualization techniques improve every day, new types of virtual environments are emerging; advanced technologies such as serious gaming are taken into consideration for simulation and training. The contacts with the end users are improved thanks to various national and international (EC funded projects). However, many issues still need to be addressed in both technology and legislation: 

• building of SDIs at national and international level,
• involving Central and East Europe, Asia, Central and South America countries in standardization initiatives,
• increasing the attention on modeling aspects (3D/4D) and especially on the quality of models (not only quality of data),
• further development and utilization of Sensor web,
• building of Semantic web/Ontology (communication between different domains),
• developing of user-oriented applications, considering the context of the tasks and the surrounding environment,‏
• convincing politicians in the need for technological developments and preparing required legislation for sharing information. It should not be forgotten that "research is done for social benefit",‏
• developing of geo-strategies and policies and including them in the political agendas,
• working towards "spatially enabled" society,
• building "trust: in use of technology by showing best practice, demonstrators, usability tests, etc.

These observations and conclusions are summarized in a Resolution of the Round-table.

 

Early warning and emergency response are complex processes and depend on timely delivery of large volumes of accurate, relevant, up-to-date geo-information. To be successfully used for decision making, many challenges are posed to data management, discovery, translation, integration, visualisation and communication and reflect many aspects: scale/resolution, dimension, classification and attribute schemes, temporal aspects, spatial reference systems, semantics, etc. The 5^th symposium of Gi4DM has shown the obvious progress in appropriate use of geo-information in emergency response and outlined directions for further research and developments.    

 

 

 

Closing Session

 

 

The next Gi4DM symposiums is going to be organized by the Ad-Hoc Committee on "Risk and Disaster Management" and ISPRS, WG VIII/2 "Hazards, Disasters and Public Health" in January/February 2009, Torino, Italy,

 

Sisi Zlatanova

Chair ISPRS WG IV/8 "3D Spatial Data Integration for Disaster Management and Environmental Monitoring"

Milan Konecny

Chair ICA WG "Cartography in Early Warning and Crisis Management"

Orhan Altan

President ISPRS, Chair JB GIS Ad-hoc Committee on "Risk and Disaster" Management

 

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