GIS Development for Environmental Hazard Management Based on Gridding Management

Abstract

Due to the economic growth in China in recent years, the frequency of sudden environmental events has increased. As a result, Environmental Hazard Management (EHM) becomes important when mitigating such events. Geographic Information System (GIS) has been widely used for EHM both domestic and abroad, and while the studies usually focus on how to develop GIS, there has been little research on the linkage between GIS and EHM. In this paper, we propose GIS development for EHM based on Gridding Management (GM), i.e. the integration of EHM and GIS through GM. First, we will introduce the principles of GM for EHM, followed by the procedures of system development. Based on these principles, a prototype of GIS for EHM is developed for a highly urbanized district of Shanghai in which the management area is divided into appropriate grids. Each grid is supervised by a specific person, and all environmental hazard sources, sensitive objects, and other resources and information are coded geographically. After these steps, grid querying is implemented. Through a hypothetical scenario, the effectiveness of this methodology is tested and can help avoid some phenomena in traditional EHM, including separation of corporate and government EHM, neglecting surroundings information, overlaps or blind areas, no supervision or assessment, and no permanent mechanisms. We think this study is a useful probe into effective linkage between GIS and EHM.

Keywords: environmental hazard management, geographic information system, gridding management, emergency plan, risk management