‘Role Of Geographical Information System (GIS) In Managing Damages On Account Of Earthquakes’

Abstract

The paper discusses different aspects of Geographical Information System (GIS) such as the technology requirement, array of GIS softwares available and methodology for capturing data through GIS software and some facets of GIS with respecte to the data capturing errors and manageing the same.

Many application areas such as real estate, public health, crime mapping, national defense, sustainable development, natural resources, transportation and logistics can benefit from GIS.

Though, the list of application areas for GIS is unending, the paper under consideration includes some facts and figures along with case studies as to how GIS can help managing the damages on account of natural disasters, in specific, earthquake, which is one of the inevitable and devastating natural hazards that causes lots of damages and problems to  the economy, environment and the whole life of people. In comparison to other areas of application, less work has been done in the area of use of GIS in natural disaster management, for the obvious reason, these disasters being a very infrequent phenomenon. But,  considering  the  past  5  years  (2000-2005)  record  of  natural  disasters,  such    as earthquake, tsunamis, cyclones, volcano eruptions and land slides, the research in the area of GIS for natural disaster management has a lot of scope.