Climate change has increased the frequency and impact ranges of mass disasters all around the world. Disaster prevention and management therefore plays an important role in warding off diverse natural disasters. Take Taiwan for instance. Located in Circum-Pacific seismic zone, the island often faces threats due to the frequent typhoons and rainstorms.
To help the local government promptly respond to disasters, the Department of Geomatics of National Cheng Kung University utilizes the SuperGIS software to develop a disaster evacuation application, which provides related departments with references to undertake disastrous damage prevention programme.
The project focuses on integrating functions of GPS and GIS on application of smart phones that can be used in evacuation, rescue, and decreasing disastrous damage and casualties. Also, the Android-powered devices are used to display the GIS information for Disaster Evacuation and Rescue and can serve instant GPS coordinate positioning on local machine and support the connection to Web GIS Network Server on Cloud.
By working with SuperGIS Network Server, the application provides users with disastrous situation and network analyses for taking real-time traffic information such as road and bridge damage or prevention and rescue information from related sections into consideration. Consequently, the result of network analysis can be published in form of layers on map service on the mobile application for people to utilize.
Moreover, the Disaster Evacuation and Rescue system is developed as a mobile application (APP) for Android OS users who are evacuees or disaster relief personnel during accidents. Applying technologies like GPS, PDA and mobile GIS, the platform enables users to transmit the information of disaster prevention, rescue, and evacuation immediately and protect lives and property.