MODIS data based Semi-Real Time Media GIS Contents to Support Natural Disaster Mitigation

Natural disaster mitigation is a collective effort of; forecast, assessment, and encouraging the public participation in disaster mitigation. This study focused on the rarely addressed aspect, “the value of public awareness” in natural disaster mitigation. The methodology used satellite data and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to produce semi-real-time “Media GIS” contents. When deliver the content to the media with maximizing four related factors; speed, attractiveness, richness, and accuracy, Media GIS contents will help to increase the public awareness on the respective disaster. The methodology to produce Media GIS contents is based on; basic fundamentals of GIS, freely available satellite images, and information extracted from Google Earth. Hence, contents carry inherent characters of GIS and significantly different from conventional graphics in media. Also the graphical variables like, size, value, texture, hue, orientation, and shape, were optimized to match with target content users (age group, social group) and medium (print, TV, WEB, mobile), while minimizing the cost. With the news brakes of the disaster, MODIS (250m) satellite data can be extracted in GeoTIFF and KLM (Keyhole Markup Language) formats. The KML file can be overlayed on Google Earth, to extract more spatial information of the area of interest. Photoshop or any similar graphic software can be used to create the product while keeping the geometric character of the content. The final output (in TIFF/JPEG and KLM file) is the GIS media content for TV, WEB, mobile contents, and for print media, which support to increase the public awareness of the disaster. Two cases studies; disastrous flood occurred in Bangkok in 2011 and the severe drought recorded in eastern Sri Lanka in 2014, are presented in the study.