Column
for December, 1998 issue of GIS World
Avoiding"Disaster Information" Disasters
by Lance McKee
Vice President, Corporate Communications
Open GIS Consortium, Inc.
When a hurricane, tornado, tsunami, earthquake, flood or major fire hits,
fewer people die and some damage can be avoided if a plan is in place, communication
is fast and information is immediately available. Much of the information
needed for disaster planning, management and recovery is geospatial information.
Industry is progressing toward geoprocessing interoperability, which behooves
disaster managers to re-evaluate their information systems.
The progress is due to the combined efforts of vendors of GIS, Earth imaging,
desktop mapping and automated mapping/facilities management software. Along
with experts from several integrators, computer companies, universities and
technology-using agencies, vendors are developing specifications--through
the consensus process of Wayland, Mass.-based Open GIS Consortium (OGC)--for
open interfaces that will enable communication among diverse and previously
noninteroperable geoprocessing systems. That bodes well for disaster managers,
because their work typically involves coordination among a large number of
agencies, offices and private organizations that don't use the same systems.
No More Compromising
In the past, it was practical in some cases for users to standardize on a
particular vendor's products. That enabled interoperability, although the "one
product fits all" approach didn't give everyone the best solution. This
compromise soon will become less necessary, as OpenGIS Specifications roll
out and products conformant to those specifications begin to reach the market.
There will be no immediate guarantees of interoperability, and the first
steps will be small ones, but during the next few years it will get better
and better. Meanwhile, computing in general will move toward Internet computing,
in which users will find much of what they need not on their computer's disk
or on their organization's server, but on thousands of unseen World Wide
Web servers out on the public network. Users will find geodata and geoprocessing
services there, accessible and usable through OpenGIS Specification-conformant
interfaces. Wireless "information appliances" that know where they
are geographically will connect to the Internet as easily as a desktop computer
connects. Such wireless devices will be excellent tools for communication
and coordination during disasters.
Every application domain has special requirements that can be accommodated
in interfaces and common software services. OGC hopes to work with various
agencies to have them introduce disaster information requirements into the
process that produces OpenGIS Specifications. If all goes well, the process
will result in commercial geoprocessing and geoinformation products and services
that optimally serve disaster management needs. With member participation,
OGC may test and demonstrate proposed methods and technologies.
Will OpenGIS Specifications help solve the problem of different data schemas?
Yes, by providing mechanisms for data sources to report their data schemas.
Such mechanisms eventually will be built into network-resident services that
automatically find sources that have the particular features and attributes
people need to know about.
Data Standards
But everyone who thinks about a regional, national or global disaster information
network will need to think about data content standards and metadata standards.
Most of the geodata needed during a disaster is data that were collected,
updated, distributed and used before the emergency, probably with little
thought about how they would be useful during a disaster. Data owned by utility
companies, surveyors and other private data producers may be valuable before,
during and after a disaster. Military data sources also come into play during
major catastrophes. Incompatible feature names, semantics and metadata are
merely a waste and a nuisance during routine operations, but they're a tragedy
during a disaster.
Clearly, when we talk about a disaster information network, we need to talk
about the Federal Geographic Data Committee's (FGDC) work on data content
standards and metadata standards. FGDC's staff has made good progress on
their primary task, which is federal inter-agency geodata coordination, and
they have been good cheerleaders for state, regional, local, and private
data coordination. However, their charter gives them no power to impose standards
nationally. But we need national standards, not only for disaster management
but for many other purposes, not least of which is new economic activity.
Having interoperable systems without interoperable data is like having a
good telephone system but no common language. OGC strongly encourages national
dialog on the creation of new consensus approaches, organizational roles,
funding schemes and public/private initiatives that will result in nationwide
acceptance of something much like the body of standards being developed by
FGDC.
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