GI Science, Disasters, and Emergency Management

Societal responses to disasters begin with the initial post-event rescue and relief operations, followed by recovery, reconstruction, and then transcend into mitigation actions including the development of pre-impact preparedness measures, collectively known as the emergency response cycle. This paper highlights some of the applications of GI Science to the emergency response cycle, citing examples from natural hazards and from the World Trade Center disaster on 11th September 2001. More importantly, the paper describes some of the constraints on the utilization of GI Science by the practitioner community: understandable user interfaces; data quantity, quality, and integration; real-time data and information. Finally, the paper suggests some important GI Science research areas based on the needs of the disasters and emergency management research and practitioner communities.