The Standardized Disaster-Information Products for Disaster Management: Concept and Formulation

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to consider the essential concept by which to formulate standardized information that supports effective disaster response. From the experiences of past disasters, we have learned that disaster response organizations could not work effectively without information sharing. In the context of disaster response, the purpose of “information sharing” is to ensure common recognition of the disaster situation being confronted. During the Kumamoto earthquake, we provided a set of disaster information products to disaster response organizations to support their relief activities. Based on the real disaster response experience, we extracted issues of information sharing between various organizations. To resolve these issues, we discuss the concept of information sharing first, and then consider the quality of information that supports disaster response activities by referring to the information needs of emergency support organizations such as the Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT). We also analyze the Basic Disaster Management Plan published by the Central Disaster Management Council and extract a common disaster-information set for governmental organizations. As a result, we define the “Standard Disaster-information Set” (SDS) that covers most disaster response information needs. Based on the SDS, we formulate intermediate information products for disaster response that provide consistent information of best-effort quality, named the “Standardized Disaster-information Products” (SDIP). By utilizing the SDIP, disaster response organizations are able to consolidate the common recognition of disaster situations without consideration of data availability, update timing, reliability, and so on.