Large-scale natural or technological disasters often require some level of government response to mitigate their effects. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers response actions may occur under Public Law 84-99 authorizing the Chief of Engineers to activate the Corps for emergency flood control and coastal shore protection or under P.L. 93-288 as work for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Regardless of the type of disaster, rapid image acquisition and analysis is an important initial source of information that can detail conditions over a wide area. The time interval (a few hours to a few days) during which imagery provides added value is exceptionally limited, because once ground observations are reliably available, the imagery only provides duplicate information. Therefore, a test was developed to evaluate how quickly proxy hurricane damage imagery could be acquired with an airborne sensor and orthorectified into digital products that could be posted on an FTP site for the Corps of Engineers.

Social Sensing and Big Data Computing for Disaster Management captures recent advancements in leveraging social sensing and big data computing for supporting disaster management. Specifically, analysed within this book are some of the promises and pitfalls of social sensing data for disaster relevant information extraction, impact area assessment, population mapping, occurrence patterns, geographical disparities in social media use, and inclusion in larger decision support systems. Traditional data collection methods such as remote sensing and field surveying often fail to offer timely information during or immediately following disaster events. Social sensing enables all citizens to become part of a large sensor network which is low cost, more comprehensive, and always broadcasting situational awareness information. However, data collected with social sensing is often massive, heterogeneous, noisy, and unreliable in some aspects. It comes in continuous streams, and often lacks geospatial reference information. Together, these issues represent a grand challenge toward fully leveraging social sensing for emergency management decision making under extreme duress. Meanwhile, big data computing methods and technologies such as high-performance computing, deep learning, and multi-source data fusion become critical components of using social sensing to understand the impact of and response to the disaster events in a timely fashion. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Digital Earth.

Disaster management is an imperative area of concern for society on a global scale. Understanding how to best utilize information and communication technology to help manage emergency and disaster situations will lead to more effective advances and innovations in this important field. Smart Technologies for Emergency Response and Disaster Management is a pivotal reference source that overviews current difficulties, challenges, and solutions that technology must adapt to in crisis situations. Highlighting pertinent topics such as network recovery, evacuation design, sensing technologies, and video technology, this publication is ideal for engineers, professionals, academicians, and researchers interested in discovering more about emerging technologies in crisis management.

Meant to aid State & local emergency managers in their efforts to develop & maintain a viable all-hazard emergency operations plan. This guide clarifies the preparedness, response, & short-term recovery planning elements that warrant inclusion in emergency operations plans. It offers the best judgment & recommendations on how to deal with the entire planning process -- from forming a planning team to writing the plan. Specific topics of discussion include: preliminary considerations, the planning process, emergency operations plan format, basic plan content, functional annex content, hazard-unique planning, & linking Federal & State operations.

This book documents the state of the art in the use of remote sensing to address time-sensitive information requirements. Specifically, it brings together a group of authors who are both researchers and practitioners, who work toward or are currently using remote sensing to address time-sensitive information requirements with the goal of advancing the effective use of remote sensing to supply time-sensitive information. The book addresses the theoretical implications of time-sensitivity on the remote sensing process, assessments or descriptions of methods for expediting the delivery and improving the quality of information derived from remote sensing, and describes and analyzes time-sensitive remote sensing applications, with an emphasis on lessons learned. This book is intended for remote sensing scientists, practitioners (e.g., emergency responders or administrators of emergency response agencies), and students, but will also be of use to those seeking to understand the potential of remote sensing to address a range of pressing issues, particularly natural and anthropogenic hazard response.

This volume constitutes the refereed and revised post-conference proceedings of the 7th IFIP WG 5.15 International Conference on Information Technology in Disaster Risk Reduction, ITDRR 2022, held in Kristiansand, Norway, in October 2022. The 23 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 33 submissions. The papers focus on various aspects and challenges of coping with disaster risk reduction. The papers are categorized in the following topical subheadings: strategic disaster risk reduction; situational awareness; telecommunications, sensors and drones; collaborative emergency management; cybersecurity and privacy; earthquake and climate forecasting; social media analytics; community resilience.

Undertaken as part of the National Science Foundation's call for research associated with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, this volume contains research that addresses the immediate role and utility of geographical information and technologies in emergency management. It also initiates an on-going process to help develop a focused national research agenda on the geographical dimensions of terrorism. Areas covered include: geospatial data and technologies infrastructure research, root causes of terrorism, and vulnerability science and hazard research.