Developing GIS-based disaster management system for local authority - Case study in Malaysia

Abstract

This paper describes the development of geospatial-based disaster management system for an agency at regional level. Important aspects of the system such as spatial data, geospatial database, interface and specific modules for the disaster management system form major discussions of this paper. The Pengerang Disaster Management System (PDMS) is being developed for a local authority in one of the Malaysian states who’s been given a task to monitor the surrounding environmental aspects. The local authority manages one of the largest oil and gas refinery plant in South East Asia region in collaboration with national oil company, PETRONAS. The PDMS, is a one-stop centre (dashboard) for managing the operations with other agencies or stakeholders such as police, marine, army, medical team, fire and rescue units. We anticipate many aspects of disaster management could trigger from this pilot project and thus provide some interesting ideas for a local authority in managing man-made disaster such as fire, other oil and gas related incidents. Some features of the developed system such as online map publishing services, data flow and other geospatial analysis during the event will be discussed in this paper. Near-future work and a big picture of the disaster management approach (with an emphasis to oil and gas incident and scenario) also will be highlighted.