Disasters Interoperability Concept Development Study

28 February 2018: The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) requests information to help advance the OGC Disasters Concept Development Study and Pilot(s).

Every year natural disasters kill around 90 000 people and affect close to 160 million people worldwide. Natural disasters include earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, landslides, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, heat waves and droughts. They have an immediate impact on human lives and often result in the destruction of the physical, biological and social environment of the affected people, thereby having a longer-term impact on their health, well-being and survival.

The Disasters Concept Development Study and Pilot(s) is an OGC Innovation Program initiative sponsored by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC). This OGC initiative aims to help all disaster stakeholders benefit from improved access to the expanding universe of online disaster-related geographic information.

The emerging Disaster Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), an evolving technical and organizational network of diverse information resources and collaborating players, will play a key role in Disaster Management by providing support to governments, agencies, NGOs, and citizens while preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters.

The purpose of this Request for Information (RFI) is to gain a better understanding of the full potential of a Disaster SDI that could serve local, national, regional, and international stakeholders. Information gathered and publicly reported by the initiative will expose opportunities to improve spatial data infrastructures for publishing, discovering, assessing, accessing, integrating, aggregating, and analyzing geospatial data. RFI responses will be discussed with an expanded set of sponsoring organizations, which will review information interoperability and integration requirements, and then outline opportunities for a Disaster SDI Pilot planned for later this year.

Responses to the RFI are requested by March 30, 2018. The RFI includes instructions on how organizations can respond to and submit questions about the RFI, available at: Request for Information on Disasters Concept Development Study [PDF].