Role of Remote Sensing and GIS in Natural Disaster Management

In the recent past, disasters have become an issue of rising alarm. Natural disasters are intense events, which brings forth major changes in the environment over a short period of time. The consequences of which leads to injury or death of living organisms demolish up of expensive properties such as communication system, physical infrastructure and loss of natural wealth such as forests, agricultural land, environment, etc. They have a profound impact on the socio-economic system of a Nation. Depending on the nature of the disaster, the impacts may be swift or slow as in case of drought and earthquake respectively. According to the magnitude of occurrence and frequency, disaster may vary in their trigger, duration, scale and necessary actions. Natural disasters arise in many parts of the earth, and each type of disasters is confined to particular regions. It have been estimated that more than 96 percent of all deaths in developing countries were due to natural disasters. These places are particularly vulnerable to disasters prone area because of densely packed population and poor infrastructures. For the past four decades, disaster events such as earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, storms, etc, have caused a great havoc to livelihoods and brought down the socio-economic status of a country apart from severe damage to the environment. These catastrophic events clearly swab out years of urban development by destroying the buildings, infrastructures and killing thousands to millions of people. One such example which caused an immense loss to lives and properties is the 2011 Tsunami in Japan. This paper presents a general review on utilization of remote sensing and GIS for natural disaster management because remote sensing can be potentially employed to address various aspects of disaster management cycle.

Disasters can be classified in several ways. A possible subdivision is between: • Natural disasters are events which are caused by natural phenomena. These bring damage to human societies such as earthquakes, sunami volcanic eruptions, hurricanes); • Human-made disasters are events which are caused by human activities. These are industrial chemical accidents, atmospheric pollution, major armed conflicts, nuclear accidents, oil spills. Major disasters definitions are: • Geophysical desaster are the events originating from solid earth.Meteorological events caused by short-lived/small to meso-scale atmospheric processes (in the spectrum from minutes to days). • Hydrological desaster caused by deviations in the normal water cycle. • Climatological desaster caused by long-lived/meso- to macro-scale processes in the spectrum from intraseasonal to multi-decadal climate variability. • Biological Disaster caused by the exposure of living organisms to germs and toxic substances.

S. No. Name of Event Year State & Area Fatalities 2014 Kashmir 2. Cyclone Hud Hud September 2014 Odisha and Andhra Pradesh 3. Odisha Floods October 2013 Odisha 21 4. Andhra Floods October 2013 Andhra Pradesh 54 5. Cyclone Phailin October 2013 Andhra Pradesh and Odisha 23 6. Floods/Landslides June 2013 Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand

4,094

7. Cyclone Mahasen May 2013 Tamil Nadu 07 8. Cyclone Nilam October 2012 Tamil Nadu 66 9. Uttarakhand Floods Aug – Sep 2012 Rudraprayag, Bageshwar and Uttarkashi 52 10. Assam Floods July – Aug 2012 Assam --- 11. Cyclone Thane December 2011 Puducherry ,Tamil Nadu, 47 12. Sikkim Earthquake September 2011 Sikkim, Bihar and West Bengal 60 13. Odisha Floods September 2011 19 Districts of Odisha 46

14.

Sikkim Earthquake 2011 North Eastern India with epicenter near Nepal Border and Sikkim 97 people died (75 in Sikkim) 15. Cloudburst 2010 Leh, Ladakh 257 people died 16. Drought 2009 252 Districts in 10 States -----

17. Floods 2009 Andhra Pradesh people died 18. Kosi Floods 2008 North Bihar 527 deaths, 19,333 livestock perished, 2,23,000 houses damaged, 3.3 million persons affected 19. Cyclone Nisha 2008 Tamil Nadu 204 deaths 20. Maharashtra Floods July 2005 Maharashtra State 1094 deaths 167 injured 54 missing 21. Kashmir 2005 Partially Kashmir, Mostly Pakistan, 1402 deaths in Kashmir (86,000 deaths in total) 22. Tsunami 2004 Coastline of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Pondicherry and Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India 10,749 deaths 5,630 persons missing 2.79 million people affected 11,827 hectares of crops damaged 300,000 fisher folk lost their livelihood 23. Gujarat Earthquake 2001 Rapar, Bhuj, Bhachau, Anjar, Ahmedabad and Surat in Gujarat State 13,805 deaths 6.3 million people affected 24. Cyclone 1999 Orissa 10,000 deaths 25. Cyclone 1996 Andhra Pradesh 1,000 people died, 5,80,000 housed destroyed, Rs. 20.26 billion estimated damage 26. Latur Earthquake 1993 Latur, Marathwada region of Maharashtra 7,928 people died 30,000 injured 27. Cyclone 1990 Andhra Pradesh 968 people died, 435,000 acres of land affected 28. Drought 1987 15 States 300 million people affected 29. Cyclone 1977 Andhra Pradesh 10,000 deaths hundreds of thousands homeless 40,000 cattle deaths 30. Drought 1972 Large part of the country 201 million people affected

The above Table showing the major disaster occurrence in India. India is vulnerable, to a large number of disasters because more than 58.7 per cent of the landmass is prone to earthquakes of moderate to very high intensity; over 41 million hectares of its land is prone to floods and river erosion; close to 5,700 kms, out of the 7,516 kms long coastline is prone to tsunamis and cyclones; 68% of its cultivable area is vulnerable to droughts. Moreover, India is also disaster. In India, disaster risks are further compounded by increasing vulnerabilities related to changing unplanned urbanization, development within high-risk zones, demographics and socio-economic conditions, environmental degradation, geological hazards, epidemics, pandemics and climate change. All of these contribute to a situation where disasters seriously threaten India’s economy, its population and sustainable development.

The occurrence of calamities has been raised in the past years and this is primarily due to increased population pressure and other various factors contributed by natural or human interventions. There are different actions in the disaster management cycle such as mitigation, preparedness, recovery and response. Mitigation and preparedness are the pre-disaster phase concerned about the strategies to reduce the potential risks for living organisms, material or environment issues caused by the events. Emergency phase deals of relief and rescue operations. It includes checking up of Epidemic spread of diseases and assessments of loss. Basically it aims in ensuring the victims that their needs and provisions are met to alleviate and reduce suffering. One way of dealing with natural hazards is to ignore them. Due to many reasons, neither the population nor the authorities chooses to take the danger due to natural hazards seriously. The last major destructive event may have happened long time ago and is only remember as a story from the pas tand people may have moved in that area recently without having the knowledge on potential hazards. It may be that the risk due to natural hazards is taken for granted. Because of that, the many dangers and problems confronted with in people’s day today lives. Sarcastic authorities may ignore hazards because the media exposure for their aid supply. After the disaster has happened has much more impact on voters than the quit investment of funds for disaster mitigation. To effectively reduce the impacts of natural disasters, a complete planning for disaster management is required.

The role Geographical Information System (GIS) and remote sensing is very important in evolving a suitable strategy for disaster management. By using these technologies, the disaster management and occupational framework for their monitoring, assessment and mitigation, identifies gap areas and implements appropriate strategies for disaster management. With the tropical climate, coupled with high population density, illiteracy, poverty, and lack of adequate infrastructure, India is one of the most vulnerable in developing countries to suffer very often from various Natural Disasters, viz. cyclone, earthquake, flood, forest fire, drought, etc. Asia is on the top the list of casualties due to natural disasters. Space technologies play a central role in efficient mitigation of disasters. Communication satellite provides disaster warning and relief mobilization. Earth observation satellite provides essential database for pre disaster preparedness programmes and post-disaster preparedness programmes. This GIS is a perfect way for forest fire forecasting because Forest fire had a movement in both spatial and temporal. GIMS (Geographical Information and Modeling System) was installed for a management of Forest Fire, which could assign a part by telling the shape of forest fire in real time and help managers of forest fire to take best decision against these disasters. GIS and Remote Sensing can be a very useful tool to balance conventional methods. Disaster Management Mitigation of natural disaster can be successful only when complete knowledge is obtained about hazard events in an area. By the use of remote sensing data, such as aerial photos and satellite imageries, allows us to map the variabilities of topography properties. Many types of disaster, such as floods, earthquakes and droughts, etc. will have certain forerunner that satellite can detect per successfully. Remote sensing also allows monitoring the event as it occurs. From the vantage point of satellite, we can consider plan for and operationally monitor the event. At last, a complete strategy for disaster management is required to successfully reduce the impact of natural disaster. Disaster management cycle consists of two phases taking place before the event occurs, which are disaster prevention and disaster preparedness. Second phase after the event occurs, which are disaster relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction: • First of all, remote sensing and GIS provides a data base from which the evidence left behind by disasters that have occurred before can be interpreted It combined with other information to arrive at hazard maps, indicating which areas are potentially dangerous. The zonation of hazard must be the basis for any disaster management project and should supply planners and decision-makers with adequate and understandable information. Remote sensing data, such as satellite images and aerial

and geology, both in space and time. Satellite images give a synoptic overview and provide very useful environmental information, for a wide range of scales, from entire continents to details of a few metres. Secondly, many types of disasters, such as floods, drought, cyclones, volcanic eruptions, etc. will have precursors. The satellites can detect the early stages of these events as anomalies in a time series. Images are available at regular short time intervals, and can be used for the prediction of both rapid and slow disasters. • Then, when a disaster occurs, the speed of information collection from air and space borne platforms. The possibility of information dissemination with a matching quickness makes it possible to monitor the occurrence of the disaster. Many disasters may affect large areas and no other tool than remote sensing would provide a matching spatial coverage. Remote sensing allows monitoring the event during the time of occurrence while the forces are in full swing that can help. The vantage position of satellites makes it ideal for us to think, plan for and operationally monitor the event. GIS is used as a tool for the planning of evacuation routes, for the design of centres for emergency operations, and for integration of satellite data with other relevant data in the design of disaster warning systems • In the disaster relief phase, remote sensing and GIS is extremely useful in combination with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) in search and rescue operations in areas that have been distressed. The impact and departure of the disaster event leaves behind an area of immense devastation in the region. Remote sensing can help in damage assessment. It is also helpful in monitoring, providing a quantitative base for relief operations. • In the disaster rehabilitation phase remote sensing and GIS is used to organize the damage information and the post -disaster census information. Remote sensing is used to map the new situation and update the databases used for the reconstruction of an area about disaster. It can help to prevent that such type of disaster occurs again. For example, the post disaster damage reports on buildings in an earthquake stricken city may be thousands. Each one will need to be evaluated separately in order to decide if the building has suffered irreparable damage or not by disaster. After that all reports should be

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