WEB BASED DISASTER INFORMATION SHARING PLATFORM, "GeoWeb" USING OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE AND FREEWARE FOR RURAL AREAS

In Japan, Ministry of agriculture, forestry and fisheries is responsible for disaster reduction in rural areas and irrigation facilities, such as head works, irrigation canals, pump stations, landslides, farm ponds, etc. The sensor data collecting system for the detection of abnormal conditions of the irrigation facilities or landslide is now being replaced with new equipment. An event of disaster depends upon meteorological factors, various conditions of facilities, the flow of river, etc. Many different kinds of organizations, such as meteorological observatories, the river bureau, a land improvement district, etc., have observed data. If the residents in rural areas or the staffs of land improvement bureau want to know the risk of disaster, they must collect many kinds of data from many organizations. But such kind of data is related to the location. Therefore in case that each organization opens the observed data to the public using WMS, WFS, WCS or under the ISO TC211 standards, the data users can easily obtain such kind data associated with location information through the Internet. This kind of www server is called "GeoWeb". The author conducts an experiment on making it and trying to find problems.