A Procedural Construction Method for Interactive Map Symbols Used for Disasters and Emergency Response

Abstract

Abstract:The timely and accurate mapping of dynamic disasters and emergencies is an important task that is necessary for supporting the decision-making that can improve the efficiency of rescue and response efforts. The existing emergency symbol libraries are primarily composed of point symbols and simple line symbols, focusing on the representation of disasters, related facilities, and operations. However, various existing response factors (e.g., the distribution and types of emergency forces) are also important for further decision-making and emergency responses; there is a need to design complex and diverse symbols to represent this rich information. Moreover, traditional mapping systems only provide static map symbols that cannot be easily edited after creation, making it difficult to support interactive editing after the symbols are mapped, thus hindering the representation of dynamic disasters and response factors. This article targets a solution of the above issues by proposing a procedural construction method of interactive map symbols for dynamic disasters and emergency responses. There are two primary research points. First, an emergency response and decision symbol library was classified and integrated into the existing attachments to form a richer symbol library for comprehensively representing disasters and emergencies. Second, an interactive map symbol procedural construction method was designed based on (1) primitive geometric compositions and geometric graphics algorithms to construct the map symbol graphics; (2) an interactive graphics control and drawing attributes configuration method to support user interactive editing of the visual variables of the mapped symbols; (3) and a dynamic updating and drawing strategy to support the real-time refreshing of the changing visual variables. The experiment was conducted using the Wenchuan earthquake as a case study, and the results demonstrate a powerful capacity of the produced interactive map symbols, which will contribute to the improvement of the mapping efficiency and representation capability of disasters and emergency response.

The Use of Decision Support in Search and Rescue: A Systematic Literature Review

“…For instance, fire emergencies such as fire in a building or urban fire emergencies, and day-to-day emergencies that can be traffic accidents, and industrial accidents. Natural and human-made disasters [10][11][12][13][14]17,36,42,63,64,72,73,80,81,83,84,[89][90][91][92]98,99] The articles where the authors contemplate both types of disasters. It means that the presented solutions in these articles work in both types of disasters.…”

“…It can be noticed that most of the relevant articles propose solutions based on data analysis and presentation techniques. Lwin et al [64], Puspita et al [75], Gokaraju et al [76], Fontes et al [80], and Peng et al [83] designed GISs that can help to improve the efficiency and decision-making of emergency response in various scenarios. Preinerstorfer et al [63], Ahmed et al [71], Valecha et al [97], HoseinDoost et al [98], and Agrawal et al [99] developed ISs for emergency response in various scenarios, mainly focusing on land SAR.…”

An Interactive Evacuation Tool to Improve the Public Flood Perception

“…flood impact assessment, spatial planning, early warning, emergency planning, and disaster education (Hammond et al, 2015;Bhola et al, 2020;Li et al, 2021b;Macchione et al, 2019;Huang et al, 2015;Rothkrantz and Fitrianie, 2018;Smith et al, 2016;Mudashiru et al, 2021). Disaster maps generally have wealth of information, and a professional design and representation (Peng et al, 2017). However, they are not entirely intuitive to the public (Li et al, 2022a;Kellens et al, 2009;Meyer et al, 2009;Liu et al, 2018;Hagemeier-Klose and Wagner, 2009), and they merely show general static information about floods and give no recommended individual action, which results in the general public without direct flood experience not being able to imagine what really happens.…”

A Fusion Visualization Method for Disaster Information Based on Self-Explanatory Symbols and Photorealistic Scene Cooperation

“…Furthermore, a more highly realistic disaster scene requires high-performance computer hardware and software; this is prone to generating excessive visual noise, which causes the information of disaster scenes to be overloaded, thus making users face complex information processing tasks [28,29]. Other studies have emphasized the method of visualization based on visual variables (e.g., color, motion, direction, and size); the users are attracted to, then guided to focus on, the area of interest by designing symbols and adding annotations [30][31][32][33][34]. Nevertheless, symbols are less capable of facilitating mental mapping than photorealistic expression, and it is difficult to promote risk awareness.…”