USING 3D WEBGIS TO SUPPORT THE DISASTER SIMULATION, MANAGEMENT AND ANALYSIS – EXAMPLES OF TSUNAMI AND FLOOD

Abstract

In recent year, 3D geographic information system (GIS) has been receiving great attention from a variety of domains, but many 3D GIS applications are nevertheless restricted to visualization purposes only. One major reason for such limitation is the lack of formalized and comprehensive mechanism for the management and analysis of feature-based 3D geographic data. From a 3D GIS perspective, this study proposes a web-based system facilitating the simulation, analysis and visualization of disaster caused by tsunami and floods because these two types of hazard are highly related to the height and depth aspects. The core of the proposed system is the hierarchical 3D building framework capable of modelling different levels of building units and linking domain data via standardized identifiers in an integrated fashion. The system is designed as a decision support system that allows users to import real or simulated disaster scenarios and automatically response with the visualized damage assessment information. The 3D illustration not only provides a direct and intuitive interface for decision makers to visually inspect the outcomes at different levels of granularity, the symbology of 3D buildings can be also flexibly customized to highlight the impacts according to the perspective of the chosen applications. Quantitative vulnerability indexes are dynamically updated according to the timeline of the imported disasters to aid the decision of emergency response actions. The evacuation plan also can additionally consider the 3D aspects, such that citizens will be provided with information about nearby safe places (e.g., tall buildings or high hills) to reduce the loss of lives.