Slashgeo

Very Spatial points to an ESA article about satellites aiding regional rebuilding. From the article: "A segment of GMES Services known as Respond is addressing geo-spatial information requirements of the humanitarian aid community. This ESA-sponsored alliance of European and international organisations works with industry and the humanitarian aid community to improve access to maps, satellite images and geo-information. [...] Immediately following the disaster, the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters was activated, prioritising the acquisition of satellite data over the affected region. [...] The Respond alliance carried out a large amount of rapid mapping in the immediate days to follow creating over 210 individual maps involving more than 19 different satellites [...] All products were made freely available over the web sites of the Respond partners, which were distributed widely and reached hundreds and some time even over thousand downloads a day."

I recently rediscovered ReliefWeb, which provides maps for humanitarian emergencies and disasters. Several maps are published every day. From their about: "ReliefWeb is the world’s leading on-line gateway to information (documents and maps) on humanitarian emergencies and disasters. An independent vehicle of information, designed specifically to assist the international humanitarian community in effective delivery of emergency assistance, it provides timely, reliable and relevant information as events unfold, while emphasizing the coverage of "forgotten emergencies" at the same time." Closely related, the GeoCarta blog tells us GeoEye has formed a non-profit organization to give away satellite imagery for educational and humanitarian uses. Use Here's the press release.

Very Spatial links to AlertMap, an hungarian mashup provided by the Havaria Emergency and Disaster Information Services, which offers a mashup for many types of emergencies, ranging from biochemical, nuclear, volcanic activity, extreme weather and much more. The identification of an event is very fast with the use of GLIDE (GLobal IDEntifier number). Update: 07/05/08 01:05 GMT by S : AlertMap now uses worldkit, with GeoRSS as a new feature.

From the All Points Blog summary : "The "Daichi" satellite went up about two years ago. Japan launched it to collect data to create maps of remote parts of the country. Today, the Geographical Survey Institute said that the images were blurry and could not be used for the detailed mapping planned. But the images won't go to waste - they'll be used as background data for land use determination and the like."

For a link to the official store, visit the All Points Blog website.

The official Google Lat Long blog informs us of the first 2008 Google Earth layer update. They also inform us users don't need addresses anymore to get directions from Google. The GEB also has a summary regarding the new layers: "New roads layers for 26 countries! 2 million new photos to the Panoramio layer. A substantially updated Earthquake layer, and link to the USGS Earthquake monitoring tool. National Geographic Magazine articles for three more continents. Other Regularly Updated Layers" The GEB also discusses Australia water bodies layers in Google Earth.

Ogle Earth describes a global early warning system using Google.org and InSTEDD. InSTEDD stands for Innovative Support to Emergencies Diseases and Disasters. From this CFP article: "One of the applications that this project will focus around is the ability that Twitter has to work between the internet and mobile phones. Using a location detection feature, a message sent from a phone from the middle of Africa, will tie in with a layer on Google Earth, pinpointing the senders location, with the text message requesting help." Using geospatial technologies for emergencies and disaster management has been covered quite a few times before, including AlertMap, see related stories below. Another example is WebEOC Mapper, an ESRI ArcGIS Server based disaster response web interface released last September (via Kurt's Weblog).