Abstract
Abstract. Earthquake is a frequently encountered natural hazard and can cause losses of lives and assets. In order to understand the nature of seismic hazards and the risks sourced from them, careful investigations are needed by using diverse geoinformation types. Thanks to the availability of multi-platform and high-resolution geospatial datasets, vast amount of geodata can be collected and analyzed for obtaining timely information on land’s surface before and after an earthquake event; and to assist the disaster management authorities and first responders for supporting the mitigation efforts. On January 24, 2020, an earthquake with Mw 6.8 occurred in Elazig Province, Turkey; caused 41 deaths and damaged the buildings and infrastructure. Although various geodatasets could be collected and processed by the geomatics experts, their utilization by other stakeholders, such as geoscientists, local authorities, and citizens remained limited due to the accessibility issues, and high complexity in their visualization, processing and interpretation. In this study, a web-based platform called EQ4D was designed and implemented to present the multi-sensor and multi-platform 4D data to the stakeholders, and to allow for basic geo-analytical processes such as change detection, 3D surface measurements, etc. Cesium JS and Potree libraries were employed for 3D visualization. PostGIS spatial database management system was used for storing and managing the data, and for performing spatial queries. Currently EQ4D is suitable for the use of geoscientists, and can be further customized for generic use at similar geohazards and developed for the use of inexperienced users, such as citizen scientists.
Highlights
Climate change and population growth combined with the rapid urbanization increased the vulnerability of cities to natural hazards
The layer presentation menu (1) available on the platform and depicted in Figure 5 includes in the order of top-to-down: (1.1) basemaps and raster layers; (1.2) vector layers; (1.3) point clouds; (1.4) deformation data layers; (1.5) grid digital surface models (DSMs) visualization; (1.6) earthquake events; and (1.7) outputs of spatial analyses
The spatial analysis procedures or visual analytics functionality which can be performed on the platform are numerous, only the change detection was implemented at the current stage
Summary
Climate change and population growth combined with the rapid urbanization increased the vulnerability of cities to natural hazards. Among other goals and targets, such as ensuring equality, ending the poverty; the SDGs aim at increasing the resilience for disasters and reducing the vulnerability. The disaster management efforts benefit from the advancements in geospatial data collection and visualization technologies. Scientists from various disciplines utilize geospatial technologies for efficient data collection and analysis even in areas with poor accessibility. Time is another important dimension since Earth surface may change rapidly that yields to loss of crucial information for geoscientific analyses. Thanks to the various data collection platforms, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), airplanes, etc., and the higher availability of satellite Earth Observation (EO) sensors; the changes on the Earth’s surface can be recorded frequently and allow multitemporal assessments
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