After the 2013 Typhoon Haiyan left mass destruction and an “untold amount of human suffering” in the Philippine islands, the U.S. military began looking into using digital mapping to help predict natural disasters such as typhoons, hurricanes, and wildfires. As the temperatures of the ocean rise, experts predict that the strength of the storms will get stronger. Since humans do not have the power to stop one of these storms, GIS technology will help analyze them.Additionally, GIS data could help with knowing the recovery process of natural disasters.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence agency (NGA) is an agency that provides the U.S. military, policy makers, and first responders geospatial intelligence from their pentagon. A few weeks after Typhoon Haiyan, they announced the plan to begin the global geographic intelligence database. It was to be a detailed map of the world that offered information about demographics, weather patterns and other weather trends in the world.
It was in the hopes to make better predictions of humanitarian crises, such as natural disasters. In 2014, the NGA began the process of making a digital map of the Earth that would be updated frequently. Also, it would produce a topographic map of the ocean that would help improve submarine navigation. They had all the information and data they needed for this from GIS data.
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The typhoon was not the only natural disaster that the GIS could help predict patterns for. Hurricanes are one of the most expensive disasters in the U.S. and after Hurricane Irma in 2017, the NGA was requested to make geospatial imagery by the United States Agency for International Development. GIS could also help when determining the extent of damage from wildfires.
Of course, the technology cannot tell us where the fire will start, but it analyze data about the surrounding fire-contributing conditions that will help in the prevention of a wildfire. An ESRI based online GIS was used by emergency response workers to determine the extent of damage for more than a dozen wildries that burned in Colorado national forests.
GIS will help in the recovery process of natural disasters, as well. In example, in 2004 after the Tsunami in the Indian Ocean, GIS was used to support the recovery. Soon after it happened, the first concerns were “containment of any outbreak of disease and prevention of further deaths.” To address these concerns, the UN HIC team worked with the UN World Health Organization (WHO) to evaluate data using GIS to make an accurate view of the damage.
In conclusion, geographic information systems have been used for years in natural disasters when predicting hurricanes, tsunamis, or typhoons. GIS can help inform people of when or how far to evacuate if needed. It helps in getting prepared and in the recovery process.
