Journal of Remote Sensing Technology Nov. 2014, Vol. 2 Iss. 4, PP.

66-77

Integration of Smart Phone Technology & Open

Source Data for Addressing Emergency Situations
V Bhanumurthy*1, Vinod Kumar Sharma2, M V Ravikumar3, P V Nagamani4
National Remote Sensing Centre, Indian Space Research Organisation
Balanagar, Hyderabad, Telangana- 500037
*1
bhanumurthy_v@nrsc.gov.in; 2vinod_sharma@nrsc.gov.in; 3ravikumar_v@nrsc.gov.in; 4nagamani_pv@nrsc.gov.in

Abstract-India is vulnerable to a variety of natural disasters, but specifically floods and cyclones. Orissa, the super cyclone of 1999,
Cyclone Phailin of 2013, and Cyclone HUDHUD of 2014 have devastatingly impacted the life and property of people staying in the
country. Whenever a community is alerted of an oncoming disaster such as cyclone landfall, there is a need for detailed information
about the state of emergency facilities and the resources or equipment required for managing the emergency.. Though lot of data is
available in open sources, it is heterogeneous, and may be old and non-spatial in nature. The collection, updating, and integration of
various data elements required when managing emergency situations (besides development of decision support tools for enabling the
disaster managers for better management of the situation) is a challenge. Hence, this paper discusses the attempt and study to
develop a Disaster Information System by using the available data in open sources, and a mechanism for the collection and
integration of field data using smart phone technology. The information system is implemented using open source technologies in
accordance with Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards. Windows and Android based smart phones are programmed for
collecting information on various emergency facilities, along with the photograph and location coordinates using built in GPS &
camera functionality. An algorithm was developed specifically for extracting the geographical coordinates of the postal pin code
from the open street map data. Using this geo-location information, SQL based scripts were written to geo-tag the non-spatial IDRN
(India Disaster Resources Network) database for resource and equipment information. The spatial viewer & advanced GIS tools are
developed using open source technologies for finding the shortest path and facilities within a user defined area. To demonstrate the
capabilities and ease of use to decision makers, this system is implemented for Puri district of Odisha, India.
Keywords- Natural Disasters; Emergency Facilities; GIS; Open Source Technologies; Smart Phone; Disaster Management Plan

I. INTRODUCTION

Natural disasters such as floods, cyclones, and earthquakes are unavoidable. Due to India's geographic location and
condition, the country faces almost the entire scope of natural disasters. Its coastal states such as Andhra Pradesh, and Odisha
are prone to floods and cyclones, while the Himalayan and north-eastern states like Uttarakhand, Jammu, Kashmir, and Assam
are especially prone to earthquakes. Modern technologies coupled with modelling techniques have proven that advanced
warnings can be prior to the actual force of a natural disaster impacting an area. As in the case of cyclone Phalin, thousands of
people in Odisha were migrated to safe shelters prior to the impact of the cyclone. The evacuation operations can be even more
efficiently executed by providing and communicating an optimal escape routes. Similarly, in the event of a natural disaster, the
medical causality will be on higher side where information on the medical facilities is of vital importance.
When developing the evacuation plan, the coordinator needs detailed information regarding the relief shelters and possible
routes to and from each one. Similarly, information on civil supply warehouse where relief materials are stored are required to
provide basic resources such as food and water to the disaster victims, as well as to the people who had been evacuated to
shelters. Information on medical facilities and resources for relief operations are required during the rescue and relief
operations. However, information to some extent is available in a tabular form in non-spatial format, and is particularly useful
for generating spatial queries for decision making. The available information is heterogeneous in nature, hence advanced GIS
tools cannot be developed for decision making using this data. To make a spatial plan of the evacuation routes, and to visualise
the resource availability in geographical distribution, the information must be in spatial format. In most disaster struck places,
such information is not readily available to the disaster managers.
The biggest question is how to collect and update the pertinent spatial information regarding the emergency facility from
the ground. Smart phones with built-in GPS and camera functions are a potential solution for collecting relevant information
and sending it in real time, using GPRS for decision making. For rescue and relief operations, the rescue teams require specific
equipment and resources, including boats, cranes and more. Each district in a state is requiring that their available emergency
resources equipment be inventoried. The Ministry of Home Affairs, Govt. Of India has also established an online resource
inventory known as “India Disaster Resources Network,” or IDRN[1], where district officials from each state can submit
detailed information about the availability of equipments, which can be used by the district authority to deploy the necessary
equipment into the field at the time of emergency. The available IDRN data is non spatial in nature, and cannot be used
directly as an input for decision making in a GIS environment. However, converting this type of information into spatial
information through geo-coding is a challenging task. For this, the extraction of geographical location of pin codes using open
source and crowd source data is a useful technique for geo-locating available disaster resources. Furthermore, certain tools
such as emergency facility identification, such as hospitals, shelters within a user defined region, and possible evacuation

- 66 -
DOI: 10.18005/ITUP0204001
Journal of Remote Sensing Technology Nov. 2014, Vol. 2 Iss. 4, PP. 66-77

routes are required for efficient management of emergency situations.

Odisha is situated in the eastern section of India, and has 480 KM of coast line vulnerable to multiple water driven disasters,
such astropical cyclones, storm surges, and tsunamis. The state is composed of densely populated coastal plains, which are the
alluvial deposits for the state's river systems. The waterways in these areas with heavy loads of silt have very little carrying
capacity. This results in frequent floods, only to be compounded by breached embankments. Due to the fact that a considerable
percentage of the region's population lives in close proximity to sea, and the fact that it has a high tourist flux index [2](CEPT
2012)there is a constant social threat posed by natural calamities. The multi hazard vulnerability of the Puri district in regards
to natural disasters is the most serious challenge within the region. Hence, the Puri district has been considered the prime
candidate for the study area's implementation.
Emergency management depends on data from a variety of sources. The appropriate data must be gathered, organized, and
displayed logically to accurately determine the size and scope of emergency management programs. During an actual
emergency, it is critical to have accurate data and for it to be displayed logically in order to respond and take appropriate
action[3](Johnson et al. 2000). To manage an emergency scenario, decision makers must analyze information about hospitals,
shelters, power supply, roads, etc. In some instances, it may occur that the department either has less or no information about
these important facilities. To collect and integrate the important facility information while a disaster is occurring may costs
time, money, and in some cases-lives[3] (Johnson et al. 2000). To minimize these avoidable costs, there must be a detailed
important facility database available; these available databases may be integrated, or new databases can be generated.
To study and analyze the different methods for the collection of databases and their application in disaster management,
researchers have worked on various technologies. Atteih (2010)[4] has discussed the four important components of the
Emergency Management Information System (EMIS), namely application, infrastructure, data, and training. Among these, data
is most crucial component when managing an emergency situation. There are various networks available for collecting
information related to disaster management. In case of network failures or sudden non-availability of network, there must be a
mechanism to store the data collected. Intelligent mechanisms must be available to transfer information to web servers as soon
as the network is activated. Lee (2014)[5] has used the GPS technology for vehicle tracking via smart phone application. The
monitoring center developed by them using GSM, GPS & GIS has the function of accurately positioning and monitoring the
vehicle. Fajardo (2010)[6], discusses the use of Android smart phones for finding rescue routes and relief operation. In
situations such as the relief and rescue scenario in flood situation other information like inundation extent also plays a vital role
in decision making. The transport route shown by the database may not fit in flood scenario depending on idle situation, as the
route chosen may be submerged in water. A spatial viewer with the capacity to add other disaster-specific layers such as hazard
and inundation layers are also an added advantage in this type of scenario. Zheng (2013)[7] discussed transportation planning
for application in disaster relief supply, with an emphasis on using road, rail, and air using fuzzy ranking criteria. In general,
the disaster relief resources inventory is pre-dominantly non-spatial in nature[1](IDRN 2014.) However, geo-tagging of the
non-spatial information related to disaster resources is a big challenge. Crowd sourcing has become a popular method of
acquiring information, as the power of crowds is well known and can occasionally be used to derive information that was
difficult or impossible to obtain by any other means[8](Foody, Giles M., et al. 2013). Raknes (2014)[9] performed geo-tagging
of non-spatial information by using crowd sourced postal codes, but the availability of geospatial postal code data is a
prerequisite for implementing this technique. Hence, an algorithm which can extract the address of point of interest (POI) with
a pin code from the open source data and crowd source data is essential. For efficient management, this information must be
available to decision makers in a ready to use format. Miller [2013][10] has successfully implemented web 2.0 technologies for
emergency response scenarios. For development of DSS tools using web 2.0 information such as road layers must be available
as an additional service. Yu (2013)[11] has used geoservers for handling forestry data, and the same concept can be applied for
disaster management. In this paper, a modest attempt has been made to describe the useage of smart phone technology to
collect information on the emergency facility database using inbuilt GPS, as the same information is transferred online and
offline using GPRS connectivity. This database is structured with spatial references extremely suitable for making decisions in
the case of emergency. The collected information is published using open source GeoServer and UMN Mapserver for
dissemination of the information using WebGIS technologies. Other non-spatial information such as resource inventory has
been geolocated using open source data and the pin code concept. The online map viewer integrated with advanced GIS tools
and query builders are hosted on web 2.0 using open source map API's for managing emergency situations using the PHP and
PostgreSQL database framework.

II. SYSTEM DESIGN

The architecture of the system design is shown in Fig. 1. Mainly, it consists of a mobile module managing the collection
and transfer of ground data to the server, a web component for obtaining open source data, a database component for database
organisation and integration, and a set of software modules for analysis, querying, and visualising the outputs. A mobile odule
is then implemented to collect the emergency facility information (medical facilities & relief shelters) for the Puri district of
Odisha state. A smart configurable hybrid widget containing GPS, camera & GPRS controls is developed for data collection
purposes on Windows and Android platforms. A configurable file in XML format is uploaded to the mobile device for the
purpose of configuring the mobile interface. Different Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) were used to collect various facilities

67
DOI: 10.18005/ITUP0204001
Journal of Remote Sensing Technology Nov. 2014, Vol. 2 Iss. 4, PP. 66-77

related to hospital and relief shelter. User can select the facility type for data collection and the GUI get configured. This smart
concept is generalised in nature, hence only the configuration file has to change if changing the application parameters instead
of changing the code. Once the user has filled out the input form, they can take the snapshot using the in built camera. The user
can configure the photo size up to 3264 x 2448 pixels for higher resolution image. The higher resolution increases the file size,
resulting in higher bandwidth consumption during upload. For calculating the geo-coordinates while the built in GPS control is
programmed. The application also works on augmented GPS. When the user uploads the form, the parameters value, location,
coordinate, and image file name get stored in a xml file. The xml file with ground photo get uploaded to web server using post
method using a java/C# file upload with authentication method.

Fig. 1 System design

India Disaster Resources Network (IDRN) is a nation-wide electronic inventory of resources that enlists equipment and
human resources, collated from districts, states and national level line departments and agencies[1] (IDRN 2014,
idrn.gov.in/default.asp). The resources information available for the Puri district was obtained, which is non-spatial in nature.
The algorithm based on postal pin code coordinates is developed and applied to the non-spatial resource inventory of IDRN to
present the database in a spatial domain. Open source Geo servers and map servers are used to publish the spatial data as open
geo-spatial consortium (OGC) compatible WMS. The WMS gives spatial maps derived from geographic information
dynamically configured in png, gif, or jpeg format. The WMS published by the geoserver are compatible with GetCapabilities,
GetMap, GetFeatureInfo, DescribeLayer, and GetLegendGraphic requests. To query the layer with the mentioned requests, an
online spatial viewer is developed using Openlayers 2 API's, JavaScript, php, snf html. The general GIS tools such as zoom,
identification, length, area, etc, are customised using Openlayers API's. The advanced GIS tools such as buffering and
proximity analysis are developed using PostgreSQL, and an OSM2PO routing engine. All of the tools are integrated in the
spatial viewer and hosted online via web 2.0 as a user friendly web based information system. The details about the each
module is explained in the next section.

III. SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION

A. Smart Phone Application for Data Collection

The pertinent information about the emergency facilities that are available within a district can be collected using smart
phones. Most smart phones operate on either Windows or Android operating systems. To enable the mobile applications

68
DOI: 10.18005/ITUP0204001
Journal of Remote Sensing Technology Nov. 2014, Vol. 2 Iss. 4, PP. 66-77

compatible with these operating systems, a smart phone application is developed on a Windows and Android platform. Details
regarding this specific topic are shown in Table 1. The application uses the built-in Global Positioning System (GPS) and
follows the National Marine Electronics Association standards while calculating the location coordinates of the emergency
facility. The application is customised to accept GDOP values from 1-8 for location accuracy, however, the user can change
this up to 50.
TABLE 1 MOBILE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT & IMPLEMENTATION ENVIRONMENT

Phase Environment
Development Windows, Andoid
Deployment Windows mobile 6.1, Android 2.3
Platform Microsoft .Net (3.5), Java
API/DLL GPS, Camera & File(XML) I/O operations
Any Smart phone working on windows
Mobile Device
Tested on Samsung omnia SGH i-900 & Samsung Galaxy S2

A smart, user friendly, and customised menu driven by mobile forms was developed with the aim of collecting details
regarding the emergency facility for the hospital and relief shelters. The parameters of the facility essential for decision making
during emergency situation are considered. Details of the parameters to be entered by the user for medical facility are given in
Table 2.
TABLE 2 PARAMETERS FOR COLLECTING INFORMATION ABOUT MEDICAL FACILITY

Parameter Observations
Type of Facility Relief shelter/Hospital/Go-down/fire Station/Police
Station/
Name of the building, if any
For Medical Facility
Type Private/Government (option)
Category PHC/Govt. hospital /Super specialty (option)
Inpatient facility Yes/No
If Yes, Number of beds (drop-down menu)
20,40,60, 80,100 , specify
Number of doctors General physicians
Specialists
Super specialists
Availability of Diagnostic facility Yes/No (option)

Availability of Blood bank Yes/No (option)

Availability of Emergency Medical kits Yes/No (option)

If Yes, No. of kits
Availability of ambulance facility Yes/No (option)
If Yes, No. of ambulances
Whether affected by disaster anytime Yes/No (option)
If Yes, Year drop-down menu (1998-2007)

Type of disaster drop-down menu (Flood, Cyclone, Earthquake,

others, specify)

The scheme present in Table 2 is a generalised one, however, a master configuration file can be modified with additional
parameters for collecting the other facility (like relief shelters) information. Some of the parameters (such as date and time of
collection and ID of the mobile) are automatically generated using device built-in facilities. Once the collection of details of

69
DOI: 10.18005/ITUP0204001
Journal of Remote Sensing Technology Nov. 2014, Vol. 2 Iss. 4, PP. 66-77

the facility is over, the user can secure the photograph or video of the facility, which will be automatically attached to the
respective facility details. For storing and transferring the information is stored in XML (Extensible Mark-up Language), this
information can be submitted to the server online if GPRS is available, or it can be stored on mobile memory, which will be
automatically transmitted to server upon the availability of a GPRS connection. Usually, the mobile applications are used to
send real time data from the field, but it can be extended for collecting the latest information regarding the medical facilities
also. In this work, cost effective smart phone technology is used to create a detailed database of emergency facilities, in
addition of real time reporting.

B. XML to Relational DBMS Conversion

The information, along with field photographs from the mobile devices, are uploaded to a web server using the POST
method (with authentication) through GPRS in a XML format, after having specified file name. A programme in C# in a .net
environment was written and continuously ran on te server to parse the XML files with a valid file name. It read the uploaded
XML files and organised the information into database table.

C. Algorithm for Geolocating Disaster Resource Inventory Using Crowd Sourced Data
IDRN [1] is a nation-wide electronic inventory of resources that enlists equipment and human resources collected from
districts, states, and national level line departments and agencies. This inventory is very detailed, but cannot be used in a
spatial environment due to it's non-spatial in nature, and limited use in GIS operations. To enable the information in geo-spatial
domains, open street maps [12], point of interest data, and postal pin codes were used. The detailed work flow is shown in Fig.
2.

Fig. 2 Procedure for Integration & Geo tagging of IDRN data

The OSM map data [12] is downloaded from the website in order to set the point of interest address with pin codes and geo
location, a parser is developed in C#. This reads all the pin codes and associated geo-coordinates from the address field of the
OSM POI data.
It results in a table, the "pin code table" regarding information about the postal pin codes of India, along with their geo-
coordinates. In addition to this, a software module reads the IDRN data recorded to get the address field of it. In the address

70
DOI: 10.18005/ITUP0204001
Journal of Remote Sensing Technology Nov. 2014, Vol. 2 Iss. 4, PP. 66-77

field, it will search for the postal pin code. If the postal pin code is available, it will search the geo location value of it from pin
code table and update the same in the IDRN record. Because of this, each record in the IDRN is geo located, hence it's spatial
nature. The resultant IDRN data is then published as a WMS using Geoserver, where it will be available for querying and
visualizing in the spatial domain. To increase the accuracy of the geo tagging, POI(point of interest data) is also compared with
the address of the IDRN resource. The OSM POI data is very rich in nature, and covered many important places and buildings.
The IDRN resource data in addition to the postal codes are also compared with OSM POI data for improving accuracy. If the
resource address matches the district POI data, the geo code of the postal code is replaced with POI coordinates. The result of
this gives birth to a fairly acceptable geo coded set of IDRN data, which can be more accurately geo tagged using the help of
human intervention, or a separate application can be developed, which is beyond the scope of this work.

D. Spatial GIS Viewer and Advanced GIS Tools Development

To view the information collected and geo-tagged, a 2D spatial viewer is developed using Openlayers 2.0 API's. The
spatial information in WMS, WFS, Geo JASON, and other formats can be added into this viewer for viewing the geospatial
data on the map viewer for image interpretation and analysis. Common GIS utility tools such as zoom, pan, full extent, identify,
length or area measurement, print along with spatial analysis tools were also customized and incorporated into the map viewer.
Along with the common GIS tools, advanced tools like the proximity and routing tool are also developed for facilitating the
users for decision making. The details of the same are discussed below.
1) Buffer Tool for Identifying the Facilities within User Defined Area:
The hospital and other emergency facility information is populated in PostGreSQL and published in WMS, using geoserver.
To locate the facilities within a user-defined area in the GIS domain, the following steps have been implemented.
Steps to find the functions within a region:
 The user must provide the input point(latitude and longitude by clicking on the map) and the distance(in km) around the
point that will be buffered.
 After receiving the two inputs, the program create a buffer (circle) as a vector layer (by converting km value into
degree), and fetches all the facilities fallen in the buffer from postgreSQL table.
 Create a temporary spatial file and integrate it into the viewer for visualization.
The detailed output is explained in the result section.
Shortest path by customizing open source routing engine: In order to generate evacuation routes, optimal path finding is
very important. Online, the shortest path tools may help decision makers in planning rescue and relief operations. There are
many open source routing engines available which can be customized to use crowd source data for emergency management.
In this paper, we have customized the OSM2PO routing engine, which can be used for routing the OSM data [12]. The
detail customization and implementation is discussed below:
1. Input Data: The OSM2PO routine engine is developed by the open source community by utilizing the free data
compatible with OSM data format to find the optimal path. It can read in the OSM.xml input files
(.pbf,o5m,o5m.gz,osm.bz, two file formats). The customization of the engine is inspired from the original OSM2PO
model [13](OSM2PO 2014), and its implementation in this paper is explained in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3 OSM2PO implementation for shortest path identification

OSM map data regarding India is downloaded from the OSM website[12] in .pdf format. The OSM2PO will accept the

71
DOI: 10.18005/ITUP0204001
Journal of Remote Sensing Technology Nov. 2014, Vol. 2 Iss. 4, PP. 66-77

spatial data in OSM supported formats only. There are converters available(like the FC2OSM) which can convert the material
into other data formats, like .shp into .pbf.
2. Configuration: The most important part of the OSM2PO engine is it's configuration; the user can customize the engine
by defining its own parameters for the generation of routing table and output databases which can be queried for finding
optimal path. For example, when finding the optimal path for an ambulance from a disaster location to the nearest
hospital, the program must consider only the motor ways- not the cycle way, foot way, or train way. For generation of
output routing table from input OSM data, the user can define following parameters:
a. Tile Tag: Important for managing synchronization between input data size and system memory (To avoid out of memory
situations).
b. Way Tag: It is very important to filter the ways you can choose transportation combinations from car, bike, foot, rail,
ferry, or poly for allowed traffic types in the final routing table. The engine will generate the available options by using the
“flag” set by user for the above mentioned transportation parameters. The poly input is used to inform the program that these
are the ways which are unpaved. By using this tag, the user can also specify the speed input in km/hr.
c. Relation tag: Used to define relations between way tag parameter (like car, bike = enable).
d. Node tag: It will read the different nodes from the OSM data and resolve them.
e. Log tag: This is used for generating a log file.
f. OSM2PO Routing: The most important tag is the routing tag, It creates the routes by feeding the information like
segments, barriers, one ways, turn restriction etc. This information is essential for generating the shortest path between the two
points.
g. Web server: The OSM2PO has its own web server also. This default web server can also be customized to show routing
data.
By customizing the above mentioned tag, a final routing table is generated allowing the user to find the shortest path
between source an destination based on the different routing algorithms such as Dijkstra. By implementing network weightings
with speed, direction, distance, capacity, demand etc. optimal route for effective solution for emergency management can be
calculated. The detailed result of the application of Dijkstra and heuristics are shown in the result section.
3. Converter: Depending on the configuration file, the converter reads the input data, implements the post processing, and
creates binary files of it. Further, the detailed routing table is generated by inserting the nodes, vertex, and paths
information into RDBMS. The output tables can be used for processing in desktop GIS software's like QGIS, or can be
used in web environments for processing the shortest path.
4. Routing from Web based GUI: Web based user friendly GUI's can be customized for a given area. The OSM map can
be utilized as the base map on the spatial viewer. The processed routing tables can be utilized by the operator to find the
path between two points by selecting source and destination. The optimal path can then be published and integrated
onto the map in run time for visualization and analysis.
The operator can use the default router to find the usual route between two points, which can be further optimized to find
the absolute shortest path by providing the parameters like algorithm (Dijkstra), cost in terms of KM, and an hour with
heuristics. Further, provisions to find the shortest path in case of emergency by overriding the restrictions can be implemented
in this. The difference found in the shortest path by change of input parameters is shown in the result section.
The results and discussion section displays the successful implementation of the above mentioned components for
addressing emergency situations.

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The system is implemented in India, specifically the Puri district of Odisha. The mobile application shown in Fig. 4 is
deployed on the field to collect the hospital and shelter/relief camp information. Designated teams were issued to the each
medical facility and relief shelter to collect pertinent information, along with photographic and geographic coordinates, which
would be uploaded to the server in real time. All the information sent from the ground are uploaded into the RDBMS.
Automatic scripts are written to read the database, and are published as web map service, which can be viewed on GIS map
viewer. The hospital information collected using the mobile application can be categorized on the basis of their type. Fig. 5
shows the distribution of hospitals depending on their type in Puri District of Odisha state, While Fig. 6 shows the GIS viewer
displaying the distribution of the medical facilities, which was collected using mobile applications. Additionally, a detailed
study about the availability and distribution of facilities in hospitals can be performed using this database. Field photographs
and parameters submitted for hospitals can be compared to understand the actual situation on the ground.

72
DOI: 10.18005/ITUP0204001
Journal of Remote Sensing Technology Nov. 2014, Vol. 2 Iss. 4, PP. 66-77

Fig. 4 Smart phone application for collecting information regarding the facility

Fig. 5 Distribution of medical facilities in the Puri district

Fig. 6 GIS spatial viewer showing the medical facilities of Puri district

The 2D GIS viewer was developed using Open layer API's and standard GIS tools like zoom in, zoom out, identification,
pan, length, and area calculation as well as advanced tools such as facilities in polygon, the shortest path between two points
(along with the print option) is available on the top left part of the viewer.
The left panel shows the different categories of spatial layers available for display and decision making. The base, thematic,
infrastructure, disaster specific layers are very much critical for spatial analysis during any crisis. The background data along
with non-spatial data will enable the disaster manager for taking right decision at right time. Broadly, the layers are divided
into the following sections:
1. Mobile Application data
2. IDRN( Disaster Resource inventory)

73
DOI: 10.18005/ITUP0204001
Journal of Remote Sensing Technology Nov. 2014, Vol. 2 Iss. 4, PP. 66-77

3. Base layers
4. Thematic layers
5. Infrastructure layers
6. Disaster Specific layers
7. Hazard layers
8. Raster layers
The mobile application data contains information regarding medical facilities, shelters, & go downs information. IDRN
data shows all the postal pin codes of district Puri, along with the IDRN disaster resource information. The IDRN data is geo
tagged by using crowd source data with the process discussed in section 3 above. The geo tagged disaster resource inventory in
spatial domain is shown in Fig. 7. By analyzing the IDRN data of the Puri district, we found that the most resources are
available near the district headquarters, in close proximity to important locations. Hence, by using the crowd sourced postal
codes and POI data, the IDRN resource inventory can be geo tagged with acceptable accuracy (By using 1:10000 scale maps).
Base layer tabs contain sections like state, district, taluk, village, road, rail, and drainage, while thematic layers contain
settlements, mining areas, forest boundaries, surface water bodies and more. Infrastructure layers contain information about the
railway station, helipads, ports, dams etc. Disaster specific layers contain data regarding flood inundation extracted using
satellite imagery, and hazard specific layers contain information about different hazard-prone areas extracted from historical
data.
Lastly, the raster layer contains the satellite imagery used for detail view.
All this information is in spatial domain, and can be used for analyzing the ground situation and decision making.

Fig. 7 The GIS spatial viewer showing the Geo tagged disaster resource data

The display of the different type of information on the spatial viewer will enhance the understanding of potential disaster
situations and their environment. However, additional tools such as integration of near/real time data, spatial analysis, network
analysis, resource management etc. are required for decision making and to draw the plan of action. Advance GIS functions
such as locating available facilities within an area (point in polygon) and the shortest path between accident site and medical
facility are a few additional tools which will make the disaster coordinator's task easier. To show the utility of the above
mentioned tools with integration of the data collected from ground and opens source data (IDRN), virtual scenarios has been
created.
 Scenario 1: The Puri District is famous for its religious tourist locations like the Shree Jagannath temple. Using the
temple as a point of interest, all medical facilities available within the user defined vicinity are extracted and presented
in Figure 8. This feature helps during an emergency evacuation in an unfortunate natural disaster. The disaster manager
has to select the initial point ( or center point) and the radius in km's. Figure 8 shows the list of hospitals and shelters
within a 3km of the Shree Jagannath temple. Details of the hospitals and shelters (including the photographs) are
captured using mobile applications which can be visualized on the spatial map viewer as shown in Figure 8. It is an
online tool which can be used for any online web browser. Because it is developed by open source, there is no
additional cost of licensing involved, and can be very useful for finding and querying facilities within a vicinity at the
time of disasters.

74
DOI: 10.18005/ITUP0204001
Journal of Remote Sensing Technology Nov. 2014, Vol. 2 Iss. 4, PP. 66-77

Fig. 8 GIS spatial viewer showing the Medical facilities available in 3Km radius of Shree Jagannath Puri temple

 Scenario 2: For managing emergency situations, evacuation plan, transportation management are essential inputs for
relief and rescue operations. Transportation plan provide detailed information about the available roads and shortest
path from disaster event to relief shelters for taking necessary care. Figure 6 and Figure 7 have already shown the
available resources in spatial domain. In order to expedite the deployment of equipment, the proximity tool which
calculates the shortest path is of critical importance. Fig. 9 shows how the online proximity tool is customized using
OSM2PO routing engine[13]. To show its complete functionality, we need a detailed OSM database, hence New Delhi,
India has been chosen as the demonstration's location of the tool followed by the Puri district of Odisha state.

Fig. 9 The proximity tool customised using OSM2PO showing route between two points

In this tool, the OSM data has been used to generate the routing networks, and the user has to identify the source and
destination points of the material. By using the default router, the program finds the route between the two points, and
integrates it into the viewer, as shown in Fig. 9.
The route calculated below may not be optimal to find out the shortest path, so the Dijkstra algorithm can be implemented
on the routing tables (shown in Fig. 10).

Fig. 10 Proximity tool customised using OSM2PO showing route & shortest path between two points

To manage traffic, the traffic department imposes certain restrictions on one ways on roads. During disasters, road
restrictions and one ways roads can be used (with proper permissions and authentications)to reach a destination quickly. Also,
certain heuristics like area or time restrictions (in km) or hrs) can be implemented as special case of the Dijkstra algorithm for

75
DOI: 10.18005/ITUP0204001
Journal of Remote Sensing Technology Nov. 2014, Vol. 2 Iss. 4, PP. 66-77

determining the optimal path. Fig. 11 exposes the implementation of heuristics and ignoring of restrictions on one way roads.

Fig. 11 Proximity tool customised using OSM2PO with heuristics

The proximity tool has been implemented for the Puri District, also. Fig. 12 shows the optimum path with adjusted user
parameters to display the quickest path between two points.

Fig. 12 The proximity tool customised using OSM2PO with heuristics for the Puri District

The OSM data over the Puri region is not extensively rich at the moment. To use this tool with complete functionality over
this area, an open source community (including us) must contribute actively. Enabling flood, road, and shortest path layers
together can show the part of shortest path, which is inundated. Appropriate diversions can be plan in advance to avoid the
delay.

V. CONCLUSIONS

Smart phone technology has been successfully implemented to collect emergency facility information with photographs.
The database that was generated using smart phones can be used to access the present scenario of district emergency facilities
and for emergency management. It has the potential to be a critical tool for analysing and implementing government policies
on the ground by receiving real time data. The crowd source data has the capability of geo tagging the non-spatial databases
such as the IDRN by using postal pin codes and POI data. The accuracy of geo tagging can be further improved by online
maps and field surveys, however a significant amount of resource inventory can be geo located using the already implemented
automated procedures. The data collected from ground and spatial IDRN data can be integrated when managing emergency
situations when using open source web technologies. Open source data like OSM can be used with OSM2PO (open source
customisable routing engines) for determining premiere paths by adding the roads conditions, diversions, etc. The tools can be
hosted on web environments for use without any additional cost of licensing. It could be helpful for determining the routes and
plan of action when managing emergencies. Information systems with integrated 2D spatial viewers (developed using
Openlayers API's) can ease the task of decision makers when planning rescue and relief operations.
Integration of live information including traffic density, road situations, road type, directions, barriers, capacity, demand to
calculate effective shortest path between two points can optimize the disaster-reaction process. For efficient utilisation and
implementation of the framework at Country level open source community must participate actively for generation of crowd
source information for remote places along with important cities.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Authors would like to thank the OSDMA, IDRN, ASD&CIG, DMSD & NDEM team for their support and contribution.
Authors like to thank Dr. V. K. Dadhwal, Dr. P G Diwakar, Mr.G. Srinivasa Rao, Mr.G. Behra, Mrs.Neelu Sharma, Dr.K. Ram

76
DOI: 10.18005/ITUP0204001
Journal of Remote Sensing Technology Nov. 2014, Vol. 2 Iss. 4, PP. 66-77

Mohan Rao and Ms. Sreeja Nair for their support & guidance.

REFERENCES

[1] IDRN, (2014) Indian Disaster Resource Network. [Online]. Available: http://idrn.gov.in/default.asp
[2] CEPT, Ahemdabad (2012) Comprehensive Development Plan-PKDA 2031. [Online]. Available:
http://puri.nic.in/pkda/PKDA_vol2_partA.pdf
[3] Johnson, Russ, “GIS technology for disasters and emergency management,” An ESRI White Paper, 2000.
[4] Atteih, Ahmed Sobhi, Salman A. Algahtani, and Ayman Nazmy, “Emergency management information system: Case study,” GM,
Unicom for Communication Technologies, 2010 [Online]. Available: http://www. unicomg. com/Home.
[5] Lee, SeokJu, Girma Tewolde, and Jaerock Kwon “Design and implementation of vehicle tracking system using GPS/GSM/GPRS
technology and smartphone application,” Internet of Things (WF-IoT), 2014 IEEE World Forum.
[6] Fajardo, Jovilyn Therese B., and Carlos M. Oppus, “A mobile disaster management system using the android technology,” WSEAS
Transactions on Communications, vol. 9, iss. 6, pp. 343-353, 2010.
[7] Zheng, Yu-Jun, and Hai-Feng Ling, “Emergency transportation planning in disaster relief supply chain management: a cooperative
fuzzy optimization approach,” Soft Computing, vol. 17, no. 7, pp. 1301-1314, 2013.
[8] Foody, Giles M., et al, “Assessing the accuracy of volunteered geographic information arising from multiple contributors to an internet
based collaborative project,” Transactions in GIS, vol. 17, no. 6, pp. 847-860, 2013.
[9] Raknes, Guttorm, and Steinar Hunskaar, “Method Paper-Distance and Travel Time to Casualty Clinics in Norway Based on
Crowdsourced Postcode Coordinates: A Comparison with Other Methods,” PloS one, vol. 9, no. 2, p. e89287, 2014.
[10] Miller, Servel and Derek France, “A real-time emergency response scenario using Web 2.0 (Yammer) technology,” Planet, vol. 27, no.
2, pp. 21-29, 2013.
[11] Yu, Xin Wen, et al, “Geoserver based forestry spatial data sharing and integration,” Applied Mechanics and Materials, vol. 295, pp.
2394-2398, 2013.
[12] OSM, (2014) Open Street Maps. [Online]. Available: https://www.openstreetmap.org.
[13] OSM2PO, (2014) OSM2PO Routing on Open Street Maps. [Online]. Available: http://osm2po.de/.

77
DOI: 10.18005/ITUP0204001