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.
