The Android app Geohazard provides concise summaries of natural hazard events from various data sources around the world. It allows users to view event lists, maps, and details. Users can also submit eyewitness reports. While the app aggregates data from many open sources, the formats and APIs used by these sources vary greatly, making dynamic addition of new sources difficult. The app aims to increase situational awareness, but challenges remain regarding interoperability, maintenance, and sustainability of crisis mapping tools over the long term. Linked data approaches may help address current fragmentation of geospatial data for natural hazards.

1. – The Android app Geohazard –
Experiences with shared information
on natural hazards
State of the art and forward thinking
Martin Hammitzsch and Matthias Schroeder
Helmholtz Centre Potsdam, GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences
Workshop Linking Geospatial Data
5-6 March 2014, Campus London, Shoreditch

2. Reasons to be here
• Having issues with what is
state-of-the-art
– Find others having similar problems
– Create nucleus to raise objections
• Getting advice and finding
ways how to continue
– Get inspiration
– Move to new breeding grounds
– Find helping hands and contributors
… from Geohazard app to
# State of the art
* Forward thinking
*
#
• Addressing involved parties
and stakeholders
– Spawn joint activities towards collective goals
– Seek standardisation initiative … quite ambitious

3. State of the art

4. App intro
(3) Map
Listed events can be
displayed in a map. The map
is opened with the button
(4) Marked Events
Noteworthy events can be marked as favourites.
Starred events are collected in the favourites list
to be opened with the button . Marked events
can be displayed in a map too.
(1) Event List
(5) Mark as read
New events are shown in the event list
with a white coloured background,
already selected events with a grey
coloured background. Select 'Mark as
seen' in the menu to acknowledge that
events are not new for you.
(8) Details
Select a event in the list to get more details for
the event. Reports can be sent for a specific
event too. Just select the button . Also you
may share event information with friends and
followers via Social Media.
(9) Event Group
Event information for the same event are
grouped in the event list. Just select the
button to display all events of a group.
The group button displays the number of
grouped events.
(10) Help
Events are classified according to
specific criteria, i.e. alert levels
and scales. The help provides
some information on it.
(6) & (7) Reporting
Compose and sent eyewitness reports with your
position, pictures and a description by opening the
reporting form in the menu. Just select 'Report'.
(2) Latest Events
The list of events is updated hourly in
the standard configuration for the
selected data sources. Manual updates
can be performed with the button

5. App intro cont’d
(12) Data Sources
Choose from different
data sources for
earthquake, flood,
tsunami, volcano,
and cyclone events.
(13) Update & Notifications
Define the time interval for
periodic updates and specify the
type of notification.
(15) & (16) Bounding Box
Select the region of interest for events
with a bounding box either interactively
via map or manually via coordinates.
(11) Settings
(14) Filter
Customize criteria according
to your needs and filter
events by age and other
thresholds, e.g. the
minimum earthquake
magnitude.
(17) Grouping
Group events individually by specific
parameters so that information for the
same event coming from different
data sources is combined.
(18) Display
Customize the
event list by
different sorting,
units, or colours.
(19) Map
Define the default map
type and specify if
your location has to be
displayed on the map.
(21) & (22) Reporting
Define if reports are sent to the pre-
defined Ushahidi instance or to
another Ushahidi instance.
(20) My Location
Define how your
location is
retrieved: GPS, wifi,
or cell id.

6. Background
• Natural crisis management, in particular early warning
in case of tsunami events
– Demonstrators in EC FP7 ICT project TRIDEC, Sept 2010 – Oct 2013
‘Collaborative, Complex, and Critical Decision-Support in Evolving Crises’
• Primary purpose of app
– Expansion of conventional sensors, i.e. seismic system, tide gauges, buoys, and GPS,
with unconventional sensors, e.g. eyewitness reports
– Decentralized collection of local reports using smartphone technology
– Rapid in-situ crowd-sourced measurement by people actually experiencing a crisis event
• Increase attractiveness for users – potential eyewitnesses
– Ability to access freely available public information from providers around the world
• Earthquake information services
• Tsunami information services
• Volcano information services
• Cyclone and flood information services
• Services are chosen by the user according to specific needs
– Freely available in Google Play Store  http://goo.gl/mhscua

7. Data Sources

8. Unique amount and variety of sources

9. Data access
• Pull only
• Push not officially offered
• Variety of formats
– RSS if you are lucky
– Various standards … are of no help
– HTML supplemented with TXT
– No REST API
– No or limited filter options for certain thresholds, date-time windows, location, or
statuses (e.g. new or updated information since last update time)
– Web of Data, Linked Data, Semantic Web technologies and tools … Pardon?
• Variety of semantics
• Lack of documentation and support
• Results in statically accessed data sources
– Specific configuration for each data source as part of the app
– Specific processing in adapter for each data source
– No dynamic addition of sources by the app user

10. Example BGS

11. Example BMKG

12. Example EMSC

13. Example GA

14. Example GDACS

15. Example GFZ

16. Example GNS (earthquake, RSS)

17. Example GNS (earthquake, KML)

18. Example IPMA

19. Example IRIS

20. Example KOERI

21. Example NOA

22. Example NRCAN

23. Example USGS (earthquake)

24. Example USGS (volcano)

25. Example GNS (volcanic alert)

26. Example GNS (aviation alert)

27. Example NOAA PTWC

28. Example NOAA WC/ATWC

29. Reporting

30. Haiti 2010, Ushahidi, crisis-mapping, crowdsourcing …
• In 2010 United States Institute of Peace (USIP) examined role
of crisis-mapping in the disaster relief effort following the 2010
earthquake in Haiti
• An open-source crisis-mapping
platform, provided a way to capture,
organize, and share critical information
coming directly from Haitians
• Successive application and validation
– 2010 Chile earthquake
– 2010 BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill
in the Gulf of Mexico
– 2011 Christchurch earthquake and tsunami
in New Zealand
– 2011 Japan earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear
emergency
– and many more …

31. Test case: international tsunami exercise
• NEAMWave12, Nov 27-28, 2012
– Use of App to immediately sent eyewitness
reports,
– Adoption of a crisis-mapping platform to
collect and organize eyewitness reports
– Integration of eyewitness reports in GUI for
operators on duty in early warning and crisis
management centres

32. Ushahidi data in
• Huge amount of interfaces
– Web form, twitter/social media, RSS,
SMS, e-mail, REST API, …
• REST API
– Public API does not require any authentication to
access and/or use, restricted to (public domain)
information retrieval and report submission
(regarding reports, comments, categories,
locations, and countries)
– Admin API handles most of the administrative
tasks (regarding reports, comments, and
categories) by administrators of an Ushahidi
deployment, requires an HTTP authentication

33. Ushahidi data out – REST API

34. Ushahidi data out – OGC OWS WMS/WFS
• MySQL + SQL (.ovf) + MapServer (.map) + Messaging adapter

35. Ushahidi, the de facto standard?
• Room for improvement (REST API, data model, implementation)
• Opportunities identified by Ushahidi recognized by others
• Event dependent deployments based on
commercial products and/or services
• Players with own APIs
– ESRI ArcGIS for Emergency Management – ArcGIS REST API, twitter Streaming APIs?
– Google.org Crisis Response –Google Maps APIs?
– …

36. Scales

37. Used scales

38. Earthquake scales
• Energy
– Richter magnitude scale (ML)
– Surface wave magnitude scale (Ms)
– Body wave magnitude scale (Mb, mb)
– Duration magnitude scale (Md)
– Seismic moment scale (Mo)
– Moment magnitude scale (Mw, MMS)
• Intensity
– European Macroseismic Scale (I-XII, EMS-98)
– Modified Mercalli scale (I-XII, MM)
– Medvedev–Sponheuer–Karnik scale (I-XII, MSK-64)
– Liedu scale / China Seismic Intensity Scale (I-XII)
– Shindo scale / Japan Meteorological Agency seismic intensity scale (0-7)
The reason for so many different ways to
measure the same thing is that at different
distances, for different hypocentral
depths, and for different earthquake sizes,
the amplitudes of different types of elastic
waves must be measured.

39. Earthquake scales cont’d

40. Cyclone related scales
• Beaufort Scale (empirical measure for wind speed)
• Douglas Sea Scale, WMO sea state code (wave height and swell)
• TORRO Scale (wind speed intensity)
• Fujita–Pearson Scale, Enhanced Fujita scale, Hurricane Severity
Index, Carvill Hurricane Index (damage, destructive capability)
• WMO by region (intensity)
– Atlantic and East Pacific:
Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale
– Western Pacific: Tropical Cyclone Intensity Scale (TCIS),
RSMC Tokyo
– North Indian Ocean: TCIS,
RSMC New Delhi
– South-Western Indian Ocean: TCIS,
RSMC La Reunion
– Australia and Fiji: TCIS,
RSMC Nadi, Darwin, Jakarta

41. Cyclone related scales cont’d

42. Flood scales
?

43. Tsunami scales
• Sieberg (I-IV, 1927) and Sieberg-Ambraseys (I-VI, 1962) scales
• Imamura (0-4, 1942), Imamura-Iida (-1-4, 1963) scales
• Soloviev-Imamura (1972) scale
• Murty-Loomis (unlimited range, 1980, energy) scale
• Tsunami Intensity Scale (I-XII, 2001, damage)
• Integrated Tsunami Intensity Scale (I-XII, 2012, damage)
• UNESCO-IOC
– ICG/PTWS: Pacific
– ICG/CARIBE EWS: Caribbean
and Adjacent Regions
– ICG/NEAMTWS:North-eastern Atlantic,
the Mediterranean and Connected Seas
– ICG/IOTWS: Indian Ocean

44. Tsunami scales cont’d

45. Tsunami scales cont‘d

46. Volcanic activity scale
• Volcanic Explosivity Index (0-8, 1982)
• USGS Volcanic Activity Alert System (four levels, 2006)
• Philippines Volcano Alert Levels (0-5)

47. Volcanic activity scale cont’d

48. Forward thinking – Challenges

49. Where are we?
• Fours years past Haiti earthquake
– Hype is over … however, in case of events media is providing lots of information
• Challenges
– Interoperability, Maintenance, Sustainability
• Interplay of APIs and data
– Open API Universe at NASA, seismi.org, sigimera.org, wunderground.com, …
• Commercial players seriously come into play
– ESRI, Google …
• Established players still part of the game
– U.N., NGOs, and non-profits
– Volunteering groups such as DHNetwork, SBTF, GISCorps
– Standardization bodies such as OASIS Emergency Management TC
– R&D institutions such as universities and research centres
• Is there a shift in front of us?
• Strong and visible key player(s) may make a difference

50. Linking geospatial data for geohazards
… and other natural hazards
Geohazards and other natural
hazards affect us all
Collaboration in this community
is actively carried out
However, in the overall picture
data and IT infrastructures seem
to be patch work quite often
resulting in Medienbruch
Linked data, ontologies, RDF,
SPARQL … related concepts
and benefits have to be
anchored in this community
Implementation and maintenance
require understanding and resources
“
“
“
“
“ ”
”
”
”
”

51. Conclusions
Photo Credit : Melissa NewGirlonPost