A Spatial Data Library for Emergency Management  

Authors / CoAuthors

Hunter, A.

Abstract

Australia has a three-tiered hierarchal model of government. A single Federal government, eight State/Territory governments and approximately seven hundred municipal councils make up the three tiers. Each of these tiers, and the separate jurisdictions within the tiers, can have their own standards and arrangements for managing information useful for Emergency Management (EM). Other information resources are held by private organisations. The business drivers for a co-ordinated national approach to `data collection, research and analysis?? was identified by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) review and documented in their report `Natural Disasters in Australia ? Reforming mitigation, relief, and recovery arrangements? in 2001 (released in August 2002). Representatives of all tiers of governments were signatories to this report. Later in 2001 the events in New York on September 11 reinforced the business drivers for access to data that transcends jurisdictional boundaries, as did the 2003 bushfires in Canberra. Against this backdrop there are several projects that are addressing the infrastructure and data requirements at the state/territory level. The `LIST? in Tasmania. `VicMap? in Victoria, the `EICU? project in NSW, the `SIS? project in Queensland, the `SLIP? project in Western Australia and the ESA CAD system in the ACT are examples of spatial information Infrastructure initiatives that partially support EM at the jurisdictional level. At the national level the Australian & New Zealand Land Information Council (ANZLIC) proposed a national Distributed Spatial Data Library in 2003. Previous attempts to create centralised repositories have failed but maturing web services and the ability to produce hard-copy maps on-demand have moved this concept to a practical reality. Underpinning the distributed library is the development of a community `All Hazards? Data Taxonomy/Model for the EM community. The majority of the state jurisdictions provided input to the taxonomy, while additional expertises in the modelling and socio-economic domains were provided by Geoscience Australia (GA). The data identified by the taxonomy is sourced from varied and complex sources and formatted into a simplified, coherent form suitable for Emergency Management. The benefits of sharing data through a standardised framework are being progressively demonstrated to organisations through the ability to provide early warning of threats to their assets and services, while ensuring they maintain control of their data. There are still many hurdles to overcome before an infrastructure to support a Distributed Spatial Data Library can be realised. These hurdles can be broadly categorised as technological and cultural. The technological hurdles are no longer a significant barrier as bandwidth steadily increases, and major GIS systems support web service based data integration. It is arguably the cultural hurdles that are the most difficult. The process of consultation and review used in creating the `All Hazards? taxonomy has created a realisation among the jurisdictions of the benefits of closer ties and co-operation in data sharing and delivery arrangements. There is still some distance to travel but the implementation of an Australian Distributed Spatial Data Library for Emergency Management is moving closer to reality.

Product Type

nonGeographicDataset

eCat Id

61829

Contact for the resource

Keywords

• External PublicationConference Paper

( Theme )

• GIS

( Theme )

• risk assessment

( Theme )

• culture

( Theme )

• topography

( Theme )

• resource management

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)

• Earth Sciences

• Published_Internal

Publication Date

2005-01-01T00:00:00

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Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem    

Classification - unclassified

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence    

Access - restricted

Use - license

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Purpose

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unknown

Topic Category

geoscientificInformation

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Unknown

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Reference System

Spatial Resolution

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