Drawing on data from the USGS, The New York Times worked quickly to develop informative maps and web content showing key observations from the Earthquake and Tsunami impacting Sulawesi, Indonesia.

Credit: New York Times

This week, we will learn about how geospatial approaches and technologies were used to respond and recover from the 9.28.2018 Sulawesi Earthquake and Tsunami in Indonesia. This disaster required a large-scale response from many entities including response organizations around the world. The geography of the affected area made it very difficult to reach victims and assess the damage - posing a variety of challenges to geospatial analysts that we will explore this week.

What You Will Learn

By the successful completion of this lesson, you should be able to:

• identify and critique the ways in which GIS was used to respond and recover from the 9.28.18 Sulawesi, Indonesia Earthquake and Tsunami;
• explain the complexity associated with very large disasters that international cooperation;
• revise the final draft of your term project;
• describe and discuss the Internet of Things (IoT) in emergency management situations.

What You Will Do

Lesson 9 is one week in length. To finish this lesson, you must complete the activities listed below. 

Please refer to the Course Calendar for specific due dates.

Questions?

If you have questions about the content or lesson activities, please post them to the General Questions and Discussion forum in Canvas. While you are there, feel free to post your own responses if you, too, are able to help a classmate. If your question is of a personal nature, please email me directly through Canvas.

Sulawesi, Indonesia Earthquake and Tsunami

On September 28, 2018, at 6:02 PM local time, a 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck in central Sulawesi, Indonesia. The quake triggered a tsunami with a maximum height of 4-7 meters (13-23 feet) causing massive destruction. There was also widespread destruction due to soil liquefaction, landslides, flooding, and aftershocks (see below). There have been over 2,100 confirmed dead, 10,679 injured, and over 5000 still missing. There was mass disruption to transportation links which delayed response and recovery efforts.

Map of the epicenter and aftershocks of the 2018 Sulawesi Earthquake.

Credit: Indonesian Institute of Sciences

The earthquake occurred in a part of Indonesia that is diverse both in terms of human settlement patterns and environmental factors. It contains relatively large settlements such as Palu (population 335,297 in 2010) as well as small and remote rural settlements. The triple impact of the earthquake, tsunami and land movement made it extremely difficult to locate people in need and deliver food and medical assistance. The recovery effort has also been challenging.

Search and Rescue in Palu, Sulawesi

Credit: BNBP

Putting Yourself There

To get a sense for what this all looked like on the ground, please consider the following:

• Review: Catastrophe in Sulawesi – The Straits Times (Oct 2, 2018)
• Visit: BNPB Geospatial (Use Google Translate)

• Listen to the 3:51 minute audio report from NPR or read the transcript

Now that we have a better understanding of what happened in Sulawesi during and right after the earthquake and tsunami, I'd like you to read about three topics related to Indonesia’s disaster vulnerability and preparedness. These touch on themes we've considered earlier, e.g., social vulnerability, planning and preparedness, and emergency communications.

1. READ

Social vulnerability to natural hazards in Indonesia: driving factors and policy implications (2014) in the Journal of Natural Hazards. You can find this article on the following page in Canvas.

The first reading is a journal article about measuring and mapping social vulnerability in Indonesia and how this can be used to inform policy (you first encountered way back in Lesson 3), As you read this, think about how it fits or contrasts with what you learned about who was impacted the most by the 2018 event.

2. READ

Chapter 9: Spatial Planning, Disaster Risk Reduction, and Climate Change Adaptation Integration in Indonesia: Progress, Challenges, and Approach (2017) in the recent book Disaster Risk Reduction in Indonesia. You can find this book in the Penn State Library and/or on the following page in Canvas.

The second reading focuses on the role of spatial planning in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) efforts in the context of current vulnerabilities and changing vulnerability with climate change. There are two key points I'd like you to take from this reading. The first is the concept of Disaster Risk Reduction, and the second is the idea that the current hazard and risk profile of a given area is not fixed and may be exacerbated by factors such as climate change or rapid urbanization.

3. READ

Finally, have a look at the following online resources about tsunami warning systems.

• What is a tsunami and how are they monitored?
• What Went Wrong With Indonesia’s Tsunami Early Warning System
• Would the U.S. Tsunami Warning System Have Averted Indonesia’s Disaster?

The final readings take a different direction and discuss tsunami warning systems, how they are meant to work and what happen during the 2018 Sulawesi event.

This week’s emerging theme topic, digital twin, brings together most of the emerging themes (and other content) you have learned about over the last few weeks.

The basic idea behind a digital twin is to build a virtual version of a real world system by integrating a wide range of datasets and models. The twin allows you to examine the way the system works and to see the effects of potential changes. They may also incorporate machine learning are are able to learn and change over time as new information is added.

For example, a digital twin of an aircraft engine allows engineers to understand maintenance needs and performance issues under real world and modelled conditions. For example, Rolls-Royce feeds inflight sensor and instrument data via satellite link its digital twin.

Rolls-Royce UltraFan TurboFan

Credit: Rolls-Royce

Read this short article on Rolls-Royce’s IntellgentEngine program: How Digital Twin technology can enhance Aviation

You may hear digital twin talked about in the context of the “multiverse”. This language is a bit trendy, but the basic point is that a digital twin provides a way of creating / testing out new ideas or looking at problems in different (endless??) ways. A basic example might be modelling the potential impact of different road intersection options on pedestrian safety. On a much broader scale, and in an emergency management context, a digital twin may be used to understand the cascading impacts of major flooding in an urban area. Impacts that may not be obvious using traditional GIS or statistical analysis.

Video: What is a Digital Twin? How does it work? (1:56)

Video: Digital Twin Sydney (4:24)

TAKE A QUICK LOOK / KEEP FOR REFERENCE

Have a quick look at these two websites that provide some detailed information about Digital Twin from the point of view of two software developers in this space.

• Digital Twins Explained: A Guide for the Built Environment from the New Zealand Company, 12d Synergy. This guide is also available for download.
• Next look at ESRIs (more flashy!) Digital Twin website and go ahead and download a copy of their eBook for future reference.

Take note of how familiar geospatial and data science methods and technologies are used in the context of a Digital Twin.

Digital Twin – Examples

Now, look at this short video and have a play with the New South Wales Digital Twin.

Video: New South Wales Digital Twin (2:07)

Now spend a few minutes exploring the data sets and tools on the New South Wales Digital Twin web portal

End your exploration with this short article about how the NSW Digital Twin to inform emergency planning this bushfire season.

Climate Resilience Demonstrator

The following video and interactive app were created as part of The Digital Twin (DT) Hub by the Centre for Digital Britain at the University of Cambridge. It will probably make you think about the scenario development group project you completed a couple of weeks ago. Start by watching the video and then move on to the interactive app.

Video: Tomorrow Today - a CReDo film, and Interactive App (6:21)

Now, work through the interactive app.

TAKE A QUICK LOOK / KEEP FOR REFERENCE

If you are interested in taking a deeper dive into the topic of Digital Twin, you may want to look at the follow recent journal papers. They provide nice reviews of the history of DT and their applications in disaster and emergency managment. No need to read these carefully - Just skim / have a look at tables and figures. Note PDF versions are on the following page in Canvas.

Disaster City Digital Twin: A vision for integrating artificial and human intelligence for disaster management

Digital twin-driven intelligence disaster prevention and mitigation for infrastructure: advances, challenges, and opportunities

RESPOND

• What stands out to you about the Digital Twin approach?
• Do these examples meet the your expectations or definitions of DT from the previous readings?
• Do you think we can achieve spatial Digital Twins as robust as the Rolls-Royce IntellgentEngine? Does GeoAI help?
• What stages of EM can DT be used to help with? How do DT let you plan for the future? New normals?
• Can DT help us understand/model multi-hazard, compounding, cascading events?

I'd like you to conducted a quick analysis and write a short report synthesising what you have learned about the Sulawesi Earthquake and Tsunami. 

To begin with, you will work with satellite image pairs taken before and immediately following the 2018 Sulawesi event. The imagery is from Palu and the surrounding area. Imagine you are helping assess the damage on critical infrastructure (rather than population issues or housing) for the purposes of early recovery/clean-up.

I would like you to identify three areas demonstrating three different types of disaster impacts, e.g., landslide area. Present these as side by side image pairs. You can identify these areas manually through visual examination, refer to crowdsourcing maps where damage has already been identified, or even conduct your own image classification and change detection analysis.

After you assess the satellite images and have your image pairs, look online for an on-the-ground photo showing what these areas might look like up close, and then provide short captions for each image.

There will be a lot of obvious damage to things like buildings, so, brownie points for having one of your three image deal with more unusual (but significant) impacts.

You will need to:

1. Download the image pairs from the course OneDrive folder.
2. Unzip and then open the images in ArcGIS Pro.
3. It might be useful to use ArcGIS base maps or other data such as OSM or other data sources that you are aware of. For example, OSM might help you identify damage to roads.
4. Conduct your before and after assessment. Provide short descriptions (1-2 sentences) for each image pair.
5. Save your image pairs, either through ArcGIS Pro or as a simple screenshot.

Finally, draw upon your findings and the reading you have done to answer the following questions in a 300-400 report:

• Do you think the types of damage observed in the repeat imagery could have been avoided?
• How do you think emerging technologies, especially geospatial, can accelerate the process of DRR?
• BONUS - What are some of the issues associated with providing early warning to everyone versus just to first responders and emergency managers?

Deliverables

Grading Criteria

This assignment is worth 5% of your total grade and will be graded out of 10 points. 

At this point, you should be well on your way toward finishing your final term project paper. If you have already finished, consider having a colleague at work (or someone else you know who understands geospatial approaches and technology) read your final draft and offer feedback. This is a great way to check for spelling and grammatical errors, and it's also a great way to find out how well you are at communicating your ideas.

As always, if you run into trouble and need some help, please email me.

If I were you, I'd also have a look ahead at the video presentation component of the final project, which you may want to begin preparing now. It's due during Lesson 10.

This week, we have explored the 9.28.2018 Sulawesi Earthquake and Tsunami and the many ways in which geospatial approaches were used to respond and recover from this disaster. The magnitude of the disaster means that for the next several years, GIS and related technologies will continue to have a role in the long-term recovery of the region, and we can already see in subsequent disasters (like the many USA storms in 2018) that the expectations for GIS outputs continue to evolve at a rapid pace.

Next, we will begin the final lesson for this course. We will devote our attention to the term projects you have been working on throughout the semester. You will submit your final term project assignment materials and participate in a mini-conference to share your findings with your classmates.

Reminder - Complete all of the Lesson 9 tasks!

You have reached the end of Lesson 9! Double-check the to-do list on the Lesson 9 Overview page to make sure you have completed all of the activities listed there before you begin Lesson 10.