Hi Clifford,
The immediate disaster preparedness benefit of geocoding addresses would be to
get the chairman of Beaverton CERT
(http://www.beavertonoregon.gov/index.aspx?nid=569) to quit riding my sorry
butt about my current project!
Ya see, CERT members are the first boots on the ground when the professional
responders are overwhelmed. We bridge the gap between the Big Bad Thing and
the arrival of the Cavalry. Our current project is to map out all of our
members to identify who lives within a particular radius of whom, information
from which we'll build localized teams, plan equipment caches, rally points,
etc.
As you know, its all about location. After the quake/tsunami flattens the
pacific northwest, we'll be flooded with damage reports, support requests,
pop-up shelter locations, etc, all of which will probably be expressed in terms
of street address, intersection, or landmark. To do any sort of automated work
with that data (estimate the impact of the cloud of methyl-ethyl-badness from
the derailed train car, for instance), first thing I want to do is to geocode
everything so I can do math on it.
Of course, there's the whole "predict what the Incident Commander will want
years in advance" aspect to this, too. There's just no telling what the local
IC is going to come up with once the ball gets rolling. Every IC has a boss,
so this bit of mystery goes all the up to DHS/FEMA.
Anyway, whatever CERT does, we generally plan to do it without any supporting
infrastructure such as commercial power, internet, etc. If it can't be done it
with a ham radio and laptop from the front seat of my corolla, its probably not
going to happen in time to matter.
I'm just getting rolling on this, and if there is a way to make something
harder that it should be, I'm just the guy to find it. If I'm twisting at
windmills here, let me know :)
Cheers!
David
________________________________
From: Clifford Snow <[email protected]>
To: David Hiers <[email protected]>
Cc: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, January 5, 2014 11:58 AM
Subject: Re: [Qgis-user] offline address geocoding
David,
I'm a volunteer contributor to OpenStreetMap. A few of us are working to import
addresses into OSM. (Although not all countries have addresses.) I had not
considered addresses useful for disaster preparedness. Can you help me
understand how address help?
Thanks,
Clifford
On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 11:41 AM, David Hiers <[email protected]> wrote:
Hello,
>I am seeking a GIS app to use for a disaster preparedness group. As such, I
>need full functionality when the Internet is not available.
>
>
> The weak spot for most GIS apps seems to be gecoding street addresses to
>coordinates (lat/log, UTM, etc). Many apps seem to wind up referencing the
>geocoding services of google or yahoo instead of doing the work locally.
>
>
>Provided the correct data files (TIGER, etc), can QGIS be used to geocode
>street addresses without Internet access?
>
>
>
>
>Best Regards,
>
>
>David
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Qgis-user mailing list
>[email protected]
>http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
>
--
Clifford
OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch
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