Masters Thesis on Information Management for Post-disaster Building Damage Assessment

[Gavin Treadgold]

(this time from the right account...)

Hi all,

It's been a while, I know ;)

After a bit of travel recently, I am now settling down to start my recently approved proposal for a thesis on Information Management for Post-disaster Building Damage Assessment, based on observations and learning from the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence we've been living through here in Christchurch, New Zealand.

I've included my accepted brief proposal below for your information. I'm just starting the background research - a fair amount of that timed with the release of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into building failures during the earthquakes.

This is probably going to result in a rather well specified requirement document for post-disaster building damage assessment, as well as related areas such as management of people, teams, tasks and a potentially sizeable numbers of documents (images, reports etc).

In due course, I'm looking at protoyping some of this research in Sahana Eden.

Anyway, just wanted to drop in, say hi, and let you all know that I'll be starting this soon. When the time comes, I expect there will be a bit of discussion on the Sahana Eden list as to prototyping this research - there is zero funding, before you ask ;) Even I'm not getting a cent.

Any questions about the thesis - feel free to ask! :)

Cheers Gav



=== Proposal
Following the 4 September 2010 m7.1 earthquake in Canterbury, a post-disaster building damage assessment programme was implemented based upon the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering Guidelines[1]. It was approximately 4.5 days before the first map of assessed buildings was able to be made available to better understand the extent of building damage, and to assist decision-makers. The February 22, 2011 earthquake presented entirely new information management issues for the built environment due to the shear number of buildings impacted, and the thirst for information from building owners, tenants, and the general public.

Two significantly different approaches were utilised for these events:
1. September 2010 used a manually collated spreadsheet to capture RAPID 1 & 2 assessments.
2. In February 2011, the assessments were entered directly into Christchurch City Council’s building information system.

Of concern, is that the building information was primarily managed from a local authority perspective, and that the method used for the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence may not be easily redeployed elsewhere as it was specific to Christchurch City Council’s information system. Nor does this allow the development of a national engineering resource that can be deployed, following an earthquake in Wellington for instance, that can operate on a standalone system should the local council experience IT continuity issues.

There are a wide range of stakeholders that have an interest in building information. These stakeholders include building owners, tenants, insurers, engineers and the public. There are key processes that need to be reflected in the design, including setting/changing building status (e.g. green/yellow/red), making the structure and surrounding area safe, and demolition/deconstruction. There is a large amount of media to be managed, including digital photos, notes, assessment forms and reports. Finally, it is essential that all decisions/actions/status changes are clearly tracked.

The goal of this research is not so much to critique the way that post-disaster building damage assessment information was managed following major earthquakes in the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence, but rather to produce a general concept of how post-disaster building damage assessment information can be managed - not only in the New Zealand context, but also globally. Naturally this is to take an all-hazards approach and will not be limited solely to building damage from earthquakes, although the ongoing nature of the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence provides a somewhat unique example of an ongoing need for post-disaster information management for many years.

Consideration will be given to client devices (e.g. smartphones, tablets, and sources of geotagged images), server, Application Programming Interface (for connectivity between systems), and standards (for data interoperability).

Research Elements:
● Literature review of Post-disaster Building Damage Assessment methodologies, including more general Disaster Impact Assessment.
● Review Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission[2] reports and interviews to identify examples and problems that may be associated with poor post-disaster information management.
● Discussion of various deployment, platform, and ownership options and the impacts these may have on how the system is used, or able to be shared as a tool for disaster response globally.
● Develop a conceptual design of how an information system may be used to manage post-disaster building damage assessment information including clients, server, API and standards.
● Possibly prototype elements of this design using the free and open source Sahana Eden[3] software - emphasis likely to be on the server component.

[1] http://www.nzsee.org.nz/Guidelines/BuildingSafetyEvaluationAug09.pdf
[2] http://canterbury.royalcommission.govt.nz/
[3] http://eden.sahanafoundation.org/