GIS for Urban Disaster Prevention and Planning

 

Recently, we’ve completed a geographic information system (GIS) for the project of disaster prevention and planning. Located in Circum-Pacific seismic zone, Taiwan has high magnitude earthquakes frequently throughout the country. Thus, how to develop an effective urban planning system and disaster prevention plans becomes the most crucial issue to the local government.

We all know that the accurate distance measurement from each residence to the shelters is vital to Disaster Prevention and Planning. To assist Zhubei city (a city known for high-technology development in Taiwan) in achieving buffer results of shelter ranges with diverse considerations, SuperGIS Desktop 3 is used to build the spatial data of urban disaster prevention and analyze the temporary shelter range.



Setting parks and schools within the city as the shelter locations, the researchers can plan the buffer and compare different shelter ranges with four methods including “Buffer with radius value as 600 meters”, “Buffer with Facility Location Theory”, “Buffer with the actual walkable distance”, or “Buffer with the shelter which can be arrived at in five minutes”.




In this project, field surveyors also adopted SuperPad 3 for outdoor surveys and collect spatial and attribute data. Besides, according to buffer theory and research standard of spatial disaster prevention area, the spatial analysis tool helps build the spatial data through using aerial photographs, maps of city plans, field investigation methods.


More information about the application story, please visit http://www.supergeotek.com/Library_2_201206.aspx