Towards effective application of geospatial technologies for disaster management

Summary This article provides an overview of the application of geospatial technologies for disaster and emergency management; the motive behind this special issue is focusing on the importance of highlighting the efforts of geospatial technologies community in the field of disaster and emergency management. This issue provides an insight on the future directions of geospatial technologies for disaster management. It starts with presenting the process of formalization of the idea behind this special issue, presenting the themes covered in this issue; summary statistics related to the submitted papers. The article provides an overview of the current state-of-the-art of geospatial technologies for disaster management with emphasis on GIS and the emerging web and mobile services. This editorial presents as much comprehensive user view of research directions from applications and applications development. This editorial concludes by providing a vision for geospatial technologies for disaster management and emergency response and briefly overview the content of this special issue.