Geoinformation for Disaster and Risk Management - ISPRS

Determination of the benefit of use of
orthophoto data
Calculated by project attribute
Four project attributes were identified as potential
indicators of project benefit; 1) number of direct
project beneficiaries (i.e. number of families, or
number of persons, that would receive a direct
improvement in their current situation as a result of
the completion of the project); 2) physical extent and
coverage of the project area; 3) information on the
total cost of the project, and; 4) information on the
duration of the project.
The most incomplete and overestimated attribute
was project beneficiary, with only 39% of primary
users being able to provide a figure; several wildly
1
claiming their project benefited all the 4,031,589
residents in the province of Aceh, or all of the
estimated 203,998 people who were directly affected
by the Tsunami. A similar response was found for the
attribute concerning the physical extent of the
project. The attribute for duration of project was the
most comprehensibly reported upon by 91% of
respondents. This attribute was initially included to
ascertain if longer running projects had a greater
benefit, or if there was a direct link between project
duration and project cost.
Finally, the attribute of project cost was selected to
measure the benefit of the use of the data set as this
attribute was widely reported by the respondents
(87%), and could be independently confirmed by
cross checking with the RAND of the BRR. When the
use of the data set was deemed critical to the
completion or operation of the project, then the
benefit of the use of the data set was measured as
the total cost of the project, Figure 4b.
1: Badan Pusat Statistik (Statistics Indonesia) BPS, Sensus Penduduk
Aceh Nias (Census of Residents of Aceh and Nias) SPAN 2005
Figure 4: (a) Data Usage and (b) Benefit of Data Set compared to Data Set Costs
Calculated by cost of equivalent information from a
different source
If the data set was seen to be critical to the
completion or operation of the project, the primary
users were also asked to provide an estimated cost of
retrieving the same information from another
source. All cost estimations were independently
verified, considering local conditions, cost and
availability of other sources of information. The total
cost to provide the same information as obtained
from the data set was estimated to be 3.46 Million
Euro. Since primary users failed to accurately report
their project extent, it is not possible to make a
direct area based comparison of obtaining the
equivalent information, and therefore cannot be
compared directly to the 1.43 Million Euro cost of
the orthophoto project.
Conclusions
This study quantified the benefit of using the case
study data set by determining if the use of the data
set was critical to the successful completion of a
project, and then using the attribute of project cost
as a measure of its benefit. The data set critically
supported projects worth over 16 times its actual
cost and supported projects worth over 600 times its
actual cost. Over 635 further secondary users of the
data set were also clearly identified. The delayed
delivery of the case study data set to the recovery
community meant that the data could not be used for
sectors of reconstruction projects that had an urgent
and timely need for completion.
29