Geoinformation for Disaster and Risk Management - ISPRS

Activities of GSDI Association in support of global disaster management initiatives
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Emergency Response and Recovery Readiness
Even in large wealthy nations, local communities are
told that they should not expect substantial direct
delivery of goods and services from national or
international relief agencies for at least 72 hours
after a major widespread disaster. Thus local
communities must be prepared to rely on their own
public and private emergency response and
management systems in that most critical of time
periods immediately after a disaster occurs.
If the components of a spatial data infrastructure are
in place and are in use on a daily basis by local users
for accomplishing mapping, vehicle routing, asset
management, service delivery and similar tasks, then
the information infrastructure is much more likely to
be available and useful for accomplishing similar
tasks during a calamity. Learning how to use
geospatial and affiliated communication
technologies doesn’t occur overnight. Nor will data
needed to respond to emergencies appear out of thin
air. For these reasons, the GSDI Association
encourages the building of long-term SDI from local
to global scales within and among all nations of the
world.
GSDI Conferences
One of the principal activities of the association is to
provide a GSDI Conference for SDI-related
professionals, scientists, and applications, on a
regular basis to share and exchange ideas. Since
1996, experts in SDI and spatial data management
matters have come together to share their
experiences in advancing SDI platforms from local to
international levels. A continuing theme of GSDI is
realizing spatially enabled societies. The pressing
needs of societies are a particular emphasis of GSDI
conferences and include a focus on disaster
prevention, warning, management, response, and
recovery.
Small Grants Program
Nations with the few economic resources are the
hardest hit in the event of a natural or human made
disaster. Many more lives may be lost and recovery
will typically take much longer. The GSDI Association
supports an annual small grants program to support
national or sub-national activities that foster
partnerships, develop in-country technical capacity,
improve data compatibility and access, and increase
political support for spatial data infrastructure and
earth observations application development. Priority
is given to projects in developing nations and
countries with economies in transition.
Developing Partnerships
and Spreading Knowledge
GSDI provides a global venue for networking,
communicating and learning among its members.
Through the Geographic Information Knowledge
Networks (GIK Network) GSDI enhances
communications and sharing among geospatial
specialists and organizations from all nations and for
the global geographic information community at
large ( http://giknetwork.org).
Open Access to Data, Tools and Learning
Materials
The GSDI Association and its members promote
open access to the greatest extent possible to spatial
data as well as to educational materials in how to use
geospatial technologies and establish SDI. If those
affected by a disaster can’t gain access to the detailed
geospatial data and technologies they need when
they need it, the data and technologies have no value
and might as well not exist. In order to support
learning, all past books developed by the GSDI
Association have been published using open access
licenses, the articles in all the proceedings from the
past world conferences are openly published on the
web and its web pages are all posted using creative
commons licenses. Thus, legal and economic barriers
to sharing among those interested in pursuing
knowledge on topics such as emergency response
and recovery are reduced greatly.