Improvements to InaSAFE panel:

We have overhauled the InaSAFE panel in QGIS. The question area hides
itself away based on the context of what you are doing so that you
have more space to view the report in. The report area has been
spruced up with our new messaging system with a clearer layout and the
inclusion of InaSAFE branding at the top of the report area.

Icon and branding overhaul:

We have updated the branding of InaSAFE to reflect the new logo that
will be used in the software, web site and promotional materials. At
the same time we tried to make the icons clearer and more
recognisable.

Aggregation and post-processing:

A major new enhancement in this release it support for aggregated
results. Aggregation allows you to specify an additional layer when
defining the analysis criteria. This layer will be used to provide a
by-area breakdown of the results of the analysis. For example if you
are carrying out an analysis for a city, you can use district areas
within the city to provide per-area results. In the absence of an
aggregation layer, the analysis extent is used as the aggregation
unit.

The new post-processing support provides an extensible framework for
computing at-risk population demographics per aggregation area. For
example, in this image you can see the impact summary report provides
a break down of the gender and age demographics for 'kapubaten' in
Jakarta (using a flood scenario). In the gender report you can see
that based on the standard female / male population ratio, the
assessment suggests extra food provisions should be made available to
cater for lactating women.

Post processors are configurable (by pressing the button next to the
impact function chooser). For example in the image here we can see
options (highlighted in red) for adjusting the age ratios used for the
age breakdown post-processor.

Minimum needs:

All impact functions which use population for exposure will now
compute minimum needs based on standard 'Perka 7' guidelines. In
addition, these guideline daily requirements can be overridden in the
new impact function configuration options dialog (accessed by clicking
the button to the right of the impact function combo as shown in the
image here).

New configuration options:

We have added two new options (for developers / power users) in the
configuration panel.

The first lets you choose which backend to use when computing zonal
stats - the QGIS native implementation or our InaSAFE implementation.
Note: This is an advanced feature added due to limitations with the
QGIS Zonal Stats implementation in QGIS 1.8.
The second option lets you enable developer mode which is used to view
source output in the dock reporting area. Note: This is an advanced
option intended for use by developers.
Minimum needs tool
We have added a new tool for computing minimum needs. Using this tool
you can compute Perka 7 requirements for displaced people. The tool
requires a QGIS polygon layer loaded with an attribute column
containing the number of displaced people per area. When the tool is
run, a new layer will be added which contains the original polygons
and new attributes giving the weekly requirements of drinking water,
clean water, rice, toilets and family kits.

Shakemap Importer:

Shakemaps are useful for carrying out contingency planning for the
event of an earthquake. Normally these are distributed as grid.xml
files which are not usable in InaSAFE or QGIS. We have added a new
tool that will import a grid.xml file as a GEOTIFF file from where it
can be used within InaSAFE. Two different interpolation algorithms can
be used during the import process - nearest neighbour and Inverse
Distance. After the conversion, the tool automatically creates InaSAFE
keyword metadata for the layer so that it can be used immediately for
analysis.

Save scenario:

We have added a new tool which lets you save the current scenario as a
scenario text file. Used in conjunction with the Batch Runner tool,
you can use this tool to easily define a list of scenarios for the
batch runner to use.

OSM Buildings Downloader:

InaSAFE supports the use of building data in various impact functions.
In particular we support building footprints sourced from the
OpenStreetMap project (OSM). However, there hasn't thus far been an
easy way to import OSM into InaSAFE. With version 1.2.0 of InaSAFE we
now provide a simple tool to facilitate this. The tool requires
internet connection as it fetches the data via a web service running
on Linfiniti's OSM Reporter web site.

The data, once downloaded will be available to you as a shapefile. A
style file is automatically created so that it symbolises nicely in
QGIS. In addition, the correct keyword metadata is created for the
downloaded dataset so that it can be used directly in InaSAFE impact
scenario analyses.

Note: The building downloader service has limitations as to the size
of datasets that can be retrieved. As such you may experience issues
trying to fetch e.g. country wide building footprint data. Generally
datasets at a city level and below should work well.

Batch Runner:

We have added a new batch runner tool to InaSAFE. With this tool you
can setup numerous scenarios and run them all in one go. A typical use
case may be where you define a number of e.g. flood impact scenarios
all using a standard dataset e.g. flood.shp. As new flood data becomes
available you replace flood.shp and rerun the scenarios using the
batch runner. Using this approach you can quickly produce regional
contingency plans as your understanding of hazards changes. When you
run the batch of scenarios, pdf reports are generated automatically
and all placed in a single common directory making it easy for you to
browse and disseminate the reports produced.

When the batch process completes, it will also produce a summary
report like this:

InaSAFE Batch Report File
-----------------------------
P: gempa bumi Sumatran fault (Mw7.8)
P: gempa di Yogya tahun 2006
P: banjir jakarta 2007
P: Tsunami di Maumere (Mw 8.1)
P: gempa Mw6.5 Palu-Koro Fault
P: gunung merapi meletus
-----------------------------
Total passed: 6
Total failed: 0
Total tasks: 6
-----------------------------
For advanced users there is also the ability to batch run python
scripts using this tool, but this should be considered an experimental
feature still at this stage.

New website launched:

We are pleased to announce our new website at http://inasafe.org which
is a substantial overhaul of our old site. The new site sports our new
project branding and is fully translatable so that in the future we
can offer it in many languages. Currently English and Bahasa Indonesia
are supported. The site also tries to present information in a clear
consistent way and we have made many updates to the content throughout
the site.

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