A Review of Geospatial Information Technology for Natural Disaster Management in Developing Countries

Disasters are deadly and destructive events, particularly in developing countries where economic, social, political and cultural factors increase natural hazard vulnerability. The recent devastation of the Haiti earthquake on January 12th, 2010 was a prime example of the human toll a natural disaster can take in developing regions of the world. There is an imminent need to improve natural disaster management capacity in developing countries to reduce disaster impacts. Given that disasters are spatial phenomenon, the application of geospatial information technology (GIT) is essential to the natural disaster management process. However, in developing countries there are numerous barriers to the effective use of GIT, especially at the local level, including limited financial and human resources and a lack of critical spatial data required to support GIT use to improve disaster management related decision making processes. The results of a thorough literature review suggests that currently available free and open source GIT (FOS GIT) offers great potential to overcome some of these barriers. Thus, disaster management practitioners in developing countries could harness this potential in an attempt to reduce hazard vulnerability and improve disaster management capacity. The use of FOS GIT significantly reduces software costs and can help build local level GIT knowledge/technical skills that are required for successful GIT implementation.