Background

When disasters strikes or when it can be foressen, geospatial information becames a critical asset for actions that mitigate it effects. This information should be accesible and with quality enought to offert the best response.

Ton ensure the availability of this information, a working group was formed within the Specialized Technical Commitee on Basic Geographic Information, one of 37 corporate bodies of the National System of Statistical and Geographic Information. As a result, INEGI has put into operation a collaborative site for disaster response, where the different units of the mexican State exhange information to perform their functions more effciciently.

The site is at http://geoweb.inegi.org.mx/sitioIntercambioDesastres/abrirAreaIntercambio.do

Operation, structure and contents

the WEB site is a reserestricted access site for users in several goverment agencies; from yhose related to the production of geospatial mand statistical information wich is relevant for disasters to those directly in charge of the emergency response.

Once authorized user is given access to main page, several sections are presented.

Recent events

In this section,there is information related to disaster events in witch the response is going on, or occurred recently. Each event can be considered as a "subsite" inside the site. Access is given to relevant data sets, either through links to file download or the URLs to Web Map Services. Examples are Population (Census) data at the block level for towns or cities in the affected area, Hydrographic Network, Road Network and Satellite imagenary, previous to the event, and whenever possible in the hours or days after the event, so that the demaged areas and features can be located.

For each event, a message board is also created, so that several users can also exchange comments, questions, etc. There is also section for data visualization.

Historic events

Access to data sets related to events that happened in previous years or where the emergency phase ended, is preserved trough this section. The structure of tis section is the same as the one for recent events.

Available information

As a disaster may occur at any moment and any part of the country, there is a section which gives permanent access to some basic or framework data sets. Also, the access is trhough links for downloading files or URLs toa Web Services: Web Map Services, Web Features Services, and Web Coverage Services. These give direct and interoprable access to data for population (Census), economic units (DENUE), Road Network, Satellite Images and elevation data.