Public Sphere: Gov 2.0 - Raul Vera

Mapping a Disaster

Raul Vera, Googlervera@google.com

February 7, 2009

fires started sat 7 feb

still danger a week+ later

some fires burned a month

many fires, across the state

up to date information

official sourcesCountry Fire Authority:

private landswww.cfa.vic.gov.au

Dept of Sustainability and Environment:public lands

www.dse.vic.gov.au

problem #1

server load

500 Server Error

problem #2

locating these places

siblinglives here

friendʼs elderlyparents here

friend liveshere

but where are the fires?

who needs to know?people in danger

friends and family

people followingthe news

sunday morning

started thinking weshould do something

version one

process CFA RSS feed

geocode locations

publish as an interactive map

version two

automate geocoding

auto-refresh the map

search, links to relief agencies

slight issue

Fire service data not always clean

“5KM SE WARBUTON TRK”

step three

satellite imagery

NASA MODIS

TERRA and AQUA

250m resolution

daily coverage

IR detectors

rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov

polar orbitonline withina few hours

made mapembeddable

news sites

peak:8M map views/day

sustained:60 hits/sec

blog postshomepage promo

benefits

better understanding of the fire scale

took load off fire service websites

reassurance for the worried

enable people to reuseyour data

lesson

geocoded RSS ➙ maps=

map of family/friends

going forward

geocoded RSS

moreplease

more than fires

geo spatialinformation

conveys vitalinformation

alertsevacuations

disasters

how to ensure accuracy, timeliness?

very real concern fordisaster-relief agencies

create clear license

lay out terms for re-use

timeliness

attribution

links

for instance

structure

attach times to data

attach locations to data

use georss

prevent misuse selectively

e.g. limit precision locating urban fires

you arenʼt the only one with a use for

your data

open data

especially when livesmay depend on it