Successful Response Starts With a Map: Improving Geospatial Support for Disaster Management.

摘要

In the past few years the United States has experienced a series of disasters that have severely taxed and, in many cases, overwhelmed the capacity of responding agencies. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 provided perhaps the most obvious instance as millions around the world watched a region of the worlds most powerful nation apparently degenerate into chaos. With modern technologies such as satellite imaging and services such as Google Earth, it was possible for anyone with access to the Internet to see the magnitude of the disaster and to marvel at how breakdown could be so complete and pervasive in an era of such technological and information abundance. This study is about one type of information technology and the role it plays in emergency management.