Sanjay K Srivastava
Scientist-SG, Deputy Project Director (DMSP)
Indian Space Reserach Organisation(ISRO) HQ,
Email: [email protected]
VS Hegde
Indian Space Reserach Organisation(ISRO) HQ
V Jayaraman
Indian Space Reserach Organisation(ISRO) HQ
In many countries like India, risk analysis is limited to hazard mapping, showing areas where different levels of hazard can be expected. The available risk information is usually at too limited in spatial and temporal resolution to provide useful information on increasingly complex and dynamic risk patterns. Risk maps, based on coarse resolution Earth Observation (EO) data, give the impression of uniform hazard and vulnerability patterns over wide areas. As risk becomes more complex, it increasingly becomes difficult to predict both the characteristics of hazard events and consequent loss with a reasonable degree of certainty. Even where risk analysis takes into account vulnerability, this is normally restricted to the physical aspects. In most countries it is extremely rare to find risk analysis to take account of the social, economic, institutional and cultural aspects of vulnerability. The absence of conceptual and spatial models capable of representing the social, economic and cultural dimensions of vulnerability is another problem. Many aspects of vulnerability are difficult to quantify. The development of advanced models is still at the frontier of geo-informatics research, with the result that there are still no tried and tested procedures available for building social vulnerability aspects into risk information systems. The present paper brings into the focus some of these issues and highlights of the emerging perspectives, taking into account the developments taking place in EO, GIS and spatial modeling. Yet another aspect that is highlighted is a fact that geo-informatics products and services do not mean high-resolution mapping capturing the vulnerability and risks at various levels but essentially they are to drive the cause of empowering vulnerability community in terms of building their coping and resilience. The proposed paper highlights some of the case studies drawn from real life situation to illustrate such community centric approach of geo-informatics.
