idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Following the severe earthquake in Turkey and Syria, the Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology (HeiGIT) set up the "Disaster Portal" for the affected region. The portal provides real-time information on the passibility of roads and is an important tool for humanitarian organizations in disaster areas to plan relief efforts. It has received positive feedback from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and can be useful beyond the short-term response period.
The Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology (HeiGIT) launched its Disaster Portal for the affected region in February 2023 with input from the MSF GIS Middle East Team (Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders). The portal is an important tool for aid organizations such as MSF: Its real-time information helps to efficiently plan the disaster relief operations on the ground.
During catastrophic events such as earthquakes, the road infrastructure in the affected areas is often largely disrupted, conditions are unpredictable and change quickly: Roads can be impassable or open to traffic again at short notice. In order to help people on the ground, humanitarian organizations need real-time information for their operational and logistical planning: Which roads are still passable? What is the fastest way to reach a destination given the current situation? Is access to medical facilities guaranteed?
This is where the potential of the HeiGIT Disaster Portal lies. It provides organizations with up-to-date information that is necessary for planning efficient and short routes: Inaccessible areas, closed roads, destroyed bridges or closed border crossings - every ten minutes, the data is updated via OpenStreetMap and automatically taken into account in the route planning. To ensure that this up-to-date information is available in OpenStreetMap, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) organizes mapping events at short notice in crisis situations, in which volunteers quickly and collectively map up-to-date satellite data of the affected region in OpenStreetMap. HOT launched 13 mapping projects for the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, at which more than 15,000 volunteers reported mainly the condition of roads and buildings.
Thanks to this up-to-date information, the Disaster Portal can have great benefits for MSF GIS Middle East team: Xavier Charles, GIS Regional Technical Referent for Middle East at MSF, stated: “It is an awesome tool that already fulfills the purpose of saving extra effort and time in emergency response”. In general, the Disaster Portal tool already covers the most important aspects for possible use cases of MSF, and its functionalities, as well as integrated features, can also be used in the long term, beyond the response phase.
The organization provided valuable feedback that can be used to improve the Disaster Portal for future operations and optimize it for the needs of relief organizations; this is also what happened in previous operations where the Disaster Portal proved its worth, such as after the flood disaster in the Ahr Valley or Typhoon Rai.
+++
The aim of the Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology (HeiGIT) is to improve the transfer of knowledge and technology from basic geoinformatics research into practice by using innovative geoinformation technologies. It was founded in 2019 as an affiliated institute of Heidelberg University and has since then been core-funded by the Klaus Tschira Stiftung. The institute researches and develops intelligent routing and navigation services for sustainable mobility and provides geodata for humanitarian missions. In addition, innovative services from the research areas spatial data mining and machine learning are used to analyze, process, enrich and visualize user-generated geodata (e.g. OpenStreetMap).
The German foundation Klaus Tschira Stiftung supports natural sciences, mathematics and computer science and the appreciation of these subjects. It was founded in 1995 by physicist and SAP co-founder Klaus Tschira (1940–2015) by private means. Its three priorities are: education, research and science communication. This commitment begins in kindergarten and continues in schools, universities and research institutions throughout Germany. The foundation advocates the dialogue between science and society. Further information (in German) at: www.klaus-tschira-stiftung.de
Heidelberger Institute for Geoinformation Technology (HeiGIT)
Prof. Dr. Alexander Zipf, E-Mail: Alexander.Zipf@heigit.org
Linda Sendlinger, E-Mail: communications@heigit.org
Please have a look at our explanatory video on the Disaster Portal
Criteria of this press release:
Journalists, Scientists and scholars
Environment / ecology, Geosciences, Information technology, Medicine, Traffic / transport
transregional, national
Research projects, Research results
English
You can combine search terms with and, or and/or not, e.g. Philo not logy.
You can use brackets to separate combinations from each other, e.g. (Philo not logy) or (Psycho and logy).
Coherent groups of words will be located as complete phrases if you put them into quotation marks, e.g. “Federal Republic of Germany”.
You can also use the advanced search without entering search terms. It will then follow the criteria you have selected (e.g. country or subject area).
If you have not selected any criteria in a given category, the entire category will be searched (e.g. all subject areas or all countries).
