Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2006 · 11 citations · 0 references
Health ProfessionsEmergency PlanningEmergency PreparednessDisaster ResponseEarthquake EngineeringEmergency ManagementDisaster RecoveryDisaster Response PlanningEarthquake PreparednessNotification SystemsPost-earthquake Damage AssessmentRescue OperationsDisaster Loss AssessmentDisaster Response SystemsEarthquake Loss EstimationEarthquake Loss ModelingEmergency Evacuation RoutingEvacuationLoss EstimationRescue
In the years following the 1994 Northridge earthquake, many researchers in the earthquake community focused on the development of GIS-based loss estimation tools such as HAZUS. These highly customizable programs have many users, and different results after an event can be problematic. Online IMS (Internet Map Servers) offer a centralized system where data, model updates and results cascade to all users. INLET (Internet-based Loss Estimation Tool) is the first online real-time loss estimation system available to the emergency management and response community within Southern California. In the event of a significant earthquake, Perl scripts written to respond to USGS ShakeCast notifications will call INLET routines that use USGS ShakeMaps to estimate losses within minutes after an event. INLET incorporates extensive publicly available GIS databases and uses damage functions simplified from FEMA's HAZUS<sup>(R)</sup> software. INLET currently estimates building damage, transportation impacts, and casualties. The online model simulates the effects of earthquakes, in the context of the larger RESCUE project, in order to test the integration of IT in evacuation routing. The simulation tool provides a "testbed" environment for researchers to model the effect that disaster awareness and route familiarity can have on traffic congestion and evacuation time.