Mobile Internet GIS based Flood Warning and Information Systems

The recent flood disasters showed that available warning systems do not fully fulfill their requirements and potentials. This paper examines these regarding web-based and mobile GIS based flood information and warning systems. We present first prototypes that are being developed at the University of Applied Sciences Mainz for a pilot area at the Rhine and give an outlook on the state of art and potentials for mobile disaster management systems. Environmental disasters are spatiotemporal events, so only GIS can fulfill the needs of the disaster management staff, e.g. updates of the spatial extent of the disaster wich must be made available very rapidly to all interested parties. We discuss the scenarios for a mobile flood warning system and give an overview of system architecture.