Abstract
Natural disaster mitigation is a collective effort of forecast, assessment, and encouraging the public participation in disaster mitigation. This study focused on the rarely addressed aspect, “the value of public awareness” in natural disaster mitigation. The methodology used satellite data and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to produce semi-real-time “Media GIS” contents. When deliver the content to the media with maximizing four related factors; speed, attractiveness, richness, and accuracy, Media GIS contents will help to increase the public awareness on the respective disaster. The methodology to produce Media GIS contents is based on; basic fundamentals of GIS, freely available satellite images, and information extracted from Google Earth. Hence, contents carry inherent characters of GIS and significantly different from conventional graphics in media. Also the graphical variables like, size, value, texture, hue, orientation, and shape, were optimized to match with target content users (age group, social group) and medium (print, TV, WEB, mobile), while minimizing the cost. With the news brakes of the disaster, MODIS (250m) satellite data can be extracted in Geo TIFF and KLM (Keyhole Markup Language) formats. The KML file can be overlayed on Google Earth, to extract more spatial information of the area of interest. Photoshop or any similar graphic software can be used to create the product while keeping the geometric character of the content. The final output (in TIFF/JPEG and KLM file) is the GIS media content for TV, WEB, mobile contents, and for print media, which support to increase the public awareness of the disaster. Two cases studies; disastrous flood occurred in Bangkok in 2011 and the severe drought recorded in eastern Sri Lanka in 2014, are presented in the study.
Highlights
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) (Geographic information systems) is a computer-based process to capture, maintain, store, analysis, and distribute spatial data and associate attributes (Nationmaster.com 2010)
This sub-division of GIS can be termed as Media GIS, which is capable of linking disaster news with location based semi-real-time information derived from satellite images
Media GIS content can be supported by the data available in Google Earth, when the initial area is displayed on Google earth using KMZ file format
Summary
GIS (Geographic information systems) is a computer-based process to capture, maintain, store, analysis, and distribute spatial data and associate attributes (Nationmaster.com 2010). Apart from direct applications in natural disasters, GIS can be successfully used to widen the public awareness about natural disasters This sub-division of GIS can be termed as Media GIS, which is capable of linking disaster news with location based semi-real-time information derived from satellite images. When news travels around the world at a lightning speed using satellite communication systems, it’s beneficial for readers to have information about location and semi-real-time pictorial information of the disaster In this regards, the application of satellite images, especially semi-real-time satellite images can be a very effective addition for media contents of natural disasters (USGS, 2011; Altan at el., 2010; Nakya et al, 2007, Perera and Pathirana, 2006). The use of the term “semi-real-time” in this report includes the time from acquisition of satellite images to end product of the disaster media content
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