Designing Web-enabled services to provide damage estimation maps caused by natural hazards

Abstract

The availability of building stock inventory data and demographic information is an important requirement for risk assessment studies when attempting to predict and estimate losses due to natural hazards such as earthquakes, storms, floods or tsunamis. The better this information is provided, the more accurate are predictions on damage to structures and lifelines and the better can expected impacts on the population be estimated. When a disaster strikes, a map is often one of the first requirements for answering questions related to location, casualties and damage zones caused by the event. Maps of appropriate scale that represent relative and absolute damage distributions may be of great importance for rescuing lives and properties, and for providing relief. However, this type of maps is often difficult to obtain during the first hours or even days after the occurrence of a natural disaster. The Open Geospatial Consortium Web Services (OWS) Specifications enable access to datasets and services using shared, distributed and interoperable environments through web-enabled services. In this paper we propose the use of OWS in view of these advantages as a possible solution for issues related to suitable dataset acquisition for risk assessment studies. The design of web-enabled services was carried out using the municipality of Managua (Nicaragua) and the development of damage and loss estimation maps caused by earthquakes as a first case study. Four organizations located in different places are involved in this proposal and connected through web services, each one with a specific role.