Geospatial Responses to Disasters: The Role of Cyberspace continued from cover low-income countries where population growth, inadequate infrastructure, environmental degradation, and poverty create conditions of vulnerability. Disasters become “teaching moments” to better understand the human relationship to the natural world (through events such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions) and how the constructed environment of cities, rerouted rivers, and overgrown forests aggravate extreme events. Disasters reveal the need for integrated solutions that include on-the-ground emergency response informed by geospatial technologies and digital databases. Visualization and spatial applications are critical in pre-, during, and in postdisaster management and response. Increasingly, cyberspace plays a role in geospatial responses to disaster in the following ways: (1) revealing the role of virtual communities in disseminating information via new and innovative means (e.g., mobile phones, mashups, crowdsourcing); (2) illuminating the need for interdisciplinary approaches to address disasters where geospatial approaches and technologies are at the forefront; (3) identifying efforts to improve communication through spatial data; and (4) developing longterm strategies for recovery efforts, risk reduction, restoration, and monitoring programs. Steven Johnson’s book entitled The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World (published by Riverhead Books in 2006) recounts the story of John Snow’s map of cholera deaths in 1854. Johnson emphasizes the role of local knowledge and multidisciplinary approaches in creating a bird’s-eye view of the spread of the disease from a central water pump in industrializing London. Once scientific opinion accepted the waterborne theory of cholera, Snow’s map became an important demonstration of the integration of science and local knowledge, linking an artifact of the built environment to a pattern of disease and disaster. In 1883, Krakatoa, a Pacific island, vanished in a COVER STORIES 5 volcanic eruption. Simon Winchester recounts the disastrous aftermath of this event in Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 (published by Perennial in 2003). This was one of the first events to have nearly instantaneous global coverage due to the technology of the time: telegraphy, underwater cables, and news agencies. This sharing of knowledge of place and disaster is one of the main characteristics of the global village. Marshall McLuhan coined this It’s not just a picture. It’s a cargo load. of actionable information. Lat: 26° 54’ 00’ S Long: 48° 40’ 06’ W ’ ’ 08. 03.09 Resolution: .50m CE90%: 4m We capture and deliver the most image data. From Itajai, Brazil or any location, look to GeoEye’s comprehensive imagery products and services for everything you need to receive accurate, timely and accessible location intelligence. Plus, our trusted imagery experts unlock even more data with services like feature extraction and image classification. For the most complete, most actionable image intelligence possible, choose GeoEye. Image intelligence. Delivered intelligently. www.geoeye.com / svc © 2010 GeoEye. All Rights Reserved. phrase in 1960, referring to the contraction of the world due to electronic media. Disasters bring us closer via the Internet (the underwater cables of the Krakatoa era) and the World Wide Web (telegraphy and news agencies). Online disaster communities, made up of the victims and their families, governments, news outlets, nongovernmental organizations, humanitarian aid groups, and an interested public, form in response to cataclysmic events. The online disaster community is global in that it transcends national boundaries in virtual space; solicits aid and intervention; and provides multiple lines of communication and information dissemination via chat rooms, blogs, and help lines. Virtual scales are not measured in terms of distance but by one’s relationship to the event: friend, family, disaster responder, aid provider, or government official. However, the disaster occurs in an explicit geographic location with measurable results that are photographed, recorded, and placed online— where the physical environment intersects with virtual space. Effective disaster management and response demand rapid utilization of information and data from many sources. The ability to seamlessly integrate and distribute digital data into spatially explicit forms for rapid assessment and analysis during and after a disaster remains a challenging undertaking. Specialized data, data networks, and information processing methods and technologies are needed in a highly dynamic situation fraught with uncertainty and unpredictability. However, during and post-disaster activities reveal high levels of access to and pooling and sharing of digital resources, skills, and capabilities through the creation of novel and innovative sociotechnological networks. Researchers have done considerable work in addressing the role of geospatial technologies in disaster response and management. This research includes GIS and public safety; GIScience; and applications for emergency response, disaster recovery networks, vulnerability mapping, and local responses to disaster using GIS. The integration of the Internet with GIS applications has been applied to such areas as 3D real-time emergency response, serving maps on the Internet for emergency escape routes, and mobile GIS and digital video for urban disaster management. Geospatial modeling has been used for such things as determining evacuation routes, tracking hurricanes, and ascertaining refugee populations. The conceptual basis for disaster prediction and planning is undergoing a shift as evidenced by Susan Cutter et al. in a 2008 paper entitled “A Place-Based Model for Understanding Community Resilience to Natural Disasters.” Cutter et al. highlight the need to focus on resilience and adaptability rather than risk and vulnerability. The January 2010 Cartography and Geographic Information Science is a special issue that focuses on temporal and spatial scales of hazards and disasters, monitoring of long-term recovery, and methods to improve communicating knowledge of these events using spatial data. A suite of research has considered the role of continued on page 6