3D TECHNOLOGY FOR IMPROVING DISASTER MANAGEMENT: GEO-DBMS AND POSITIONING

An increasing number of disasters (natural and man-made) with a large number of victims and significant social and economical losses are observed in the last years. Although particular events can always be attributed to fate, it is improving the disaster management that have to contribute to decreasing damages and ensuring proper care for citizens in affected areas. Some of the lessons learned in the last several years give clear indications that the availability, management and presentation of geo-information play a critical role in disaster management. The paper discusses requirements for a system supporting ‘urban and urgent ’ disaster management. The aim of the system is to support facilitate the work of police forces, fire departments, ambulances and government coordinators in disaster situations. The (geo) information provision addresses important aspects such as data discovery (finding the needed information based on a user location and user profile defined on the-fly), data preparation (in a form appropriate for the requesting front-end) and data export (considering the state-of-the-art in standardisation). The focus of the paper is on the required developments at a database level (or middleware) to be able to provide context-aware solutions assuming positioning (to determine the location part of the context) and communication (to exchange the context-aware information). Three important aspects are addressed: a) Integrated management of multimedia information (graphics, text, video, raster), b) Ontology and semantic translators, c) 3D positioning to cope with emergency situations. 1