InaSAFE Documentation

INDONESIA SCENARIO ASSESSMENT FOR EMERGENCIES (InaSAFE) is free software that produces realistic natural hazard impact scenarios for better planning, preparedness and response activities.

Concept

To effectively prepare for future floods, earthquakes or tsunami you must first understand the likely impacts that need to be managed. For example, to prepare contingency plans for a severe flood in Jakarta, emergency managers need to answer questions like:

  • what are the areas likely to be affected;
  • how many people will need to be evacuated and sheltered;
  • which schools will be closed;
  • which hospitals can still take patients; and
  • what roads will be closed?

How does it work?

InaSAFE provides a simple but rigorous way to combine data from scientists, local governments and communities to provide insights into the likely impacts of future disaster events. The software is focused on examining, in detail, the impacts by a single hazard would have on specific sectors. e.g. location of primary schools and estimated number of students affected by a possible tsunami in Maumere (when it happened during the school hours).

Who can use it?

Anyone with basic computer skills can quickly learn to use InaSAFE to explore the potential impacts of a disaster event and to produce maps and reports of these impacts. The software leads a user through the process of asking a specific question and has tools to estimate the likely damage that a hazard will cause to people and critical infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, roads, etc.

Because the software is free and open, more advanced users can also add new questions and data from new sectors

Where does the data come from?

Effectively preparing for a disaster requires people from a wide range of sectors and backgrounds to effectively work together and share their experience, expertise, and resources. Using InaSAFE to develop a scenario requires the same spirit of cooperation and sharing of expertise and data.

InaSAFE is designed to use and combine existing data from science agencies, local governments, and communities themselves. Normally, information on the location of people and important assets are provided by local communities and government departments responsible for each sector, often through a facilitated part of a disaster preparedness and planning exercise.

Where appropriate spatial data doesn’t yet exist, external tools such as OpenStreetMap (www.LearnOSM.org) can allow governments and communities to quickly and easily map their assets that are important to them.

Note

It is important to note that InaSAFE is not a hazard modeling tool. Information on hazards needs to be provided either by technical experts, often from Government agencies, universities or technical consultants, or from communities themselves based on their previous experiences.

The more communities, scientists and governments share data and knowledge, the more realistic and useful the InaSAFE scenario will be.

InaSAFE was conceived and initially developed by the Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) and the World Bank.

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A completed assement using the QGIS InaSAFE plugin, in this scenario analysing flood risk in Jakarta, Indonesia.

screenshot1.jpg

Padang (Indonesia) earthquake scenario with OSM building footprints likely to undergo damage shown in red.

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Maumere (Indonesia) tsunami inundation scenario. Areas shaded in red would experience the greatest inundation in this scenario.

Open Source

The latest source code is available at https://github.com/AIFDR/inasafe which contains modules for risk calculations, gis functionality and functions for impact modelling.

Limitations

InaSAFE is still a new project. The current code development started in earnest in March 2011 and there is still much to be done. However, we work on the philosophy that stakeholders should have access to the development and source code from the very beginning and invite comments, suggestions and contributions.

As such, InaSAFE currently has some limitations, including

  • Exposure data in the form of roads (or any other line feature) is not supported.
  • Polygon area analysis (such as land use) is not supported.
  • Population density data must be provided in WGS84 geographic coordinates
  • Neither AIFDR nor GFDRR take any responsibility for the correctness of outputs from InaSAFE or decisions derived as a consequence

Supported By

The development of InaSAFE has been supported by the Indonesian Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) and AusAID, through the Australia-Indonesia Facility for Disaster Reduction, as well as the World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery. InaSAFE is a plugin built for the open source Quantum GIS application.