Spatial Data Infrastructure for emergency management: the view of the users

Spatial data play an important role in decision-making during the response phase of an emergency situation. Emergency management is a multidisciplinary activity of the fire brigades, the police forces, paramedics and the government. A spatial data infrastructure is expected to facilitate and coordinate the exchange and sharing of static and dynamic spatial data between all the emergency forces. Within the emergency forces awareness of such multidisciplinary spatial data infrastructures is rising. A socio-technical viewpoint has been adopted that means that spatial data infrastructures are being regarded as worthwhile only if they are meeting genuine user needs. The users’ need are the driving force for spatial data infrastructure development therefore the user requirements need to be defined in the initial phase of the development process. The user requirements are a user’s description of the functionality and performance characteristics of the spatial data infrastructure. In this paper concepts of spatial data infrastructures and user requirements are presented. Then needs and requirements for an ongoing research and development project in the Netherlands are defined according to the spatial data infrastructure components: data, people and technology.

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