A spatial data infrastructure perspective to facilitate Emergency Mapping Team operations

Natural disasters have seriously threatened and impacted the well-being of the society in different aspects. Traditionally, geographic information and spatial related technologies are held by different government agencies. Due to the severity of the impact of some natural disasters in recent years, private companies, NGO, independent volunteers and international organizations have also been supporting in the collection and distribution of geographic information activities after a natural disaster strikes. These jointly collaborative efforts of technology, institutions and knowledge to support mapping activities after natural disasters have been recently known as EMT(Emergency Mapping Team).Nevertheless, despite the important contribution the EMT can bring on the table of the natural disaster managers and general public to reduce the impact of the natural disaster, there is still a lack of study about how this collaborative effort between the EMTs and the government agencies can be further improved. This research take advantage of the knowledge from previous experiences of EMT operations in recent natural disaster events in different countries, and the best practice of local, national and Regional SDI implementations all around the world, to propose a SDI perspective to enhance the EMT operations. In this way, we base our analysis on the essential requirements of the EMT to create a common operational picture for natural disaster management and the available resources within the SDI sharing environment, in order to find out which data, technology and institutional arrangements can be provided by the SDI to facilitate EMT operations.