6TH International Congress on Technology - Engineering - Kuala Lumpur3 - Malaysia (2018-07-19)

Absolute Position Acquisition For Crowdsourcing Hazardous Places Using Smart Device Technologies And Geospatial Web Services

Efficient use of GIS in the phase of response in crisis management requires having access to reliable data related to the crisis. Considering the critical situations at the initial moments of all disasters including earthquakes, floods, and accidents, as well as the great significance of geographic data in relief and providing the injured with appropriate care, the necessity of such data becomes apparent. Because of the expanded geographical scope of the country, assigning a specific organization to the task of data collection would impose exorbitant costs; therefore, it is more prevalent for each organization or institution to collect its geographic data and use it when needed. Volunteered geographic information (VGI) refers to geographic information collected and shared voluntarily by the general public rather than for-profit businesses or government entities. Crowdsourcing such information on urgent needs in disaster can improve the quick emergency responses. In this study the capability of smart phone sensors, GPS, Web 2.0, VGI and Server-based technologies will be used together to design and develop a system for collecting target hazardous information from volunteers. The main part in designing such system is considering to the improvement of the absolute positional accuracy of the hazardous places based on the position of the mobile device. The recommended solutions include the use of online map services, geocoding services, and trigonometric methods based on the measurements of sensors such as camera, accelerometer, and magnetic field embedded in a smart mobile phone. In the developed system, if a volunteered user for relief operations is convinced to determine the absolute location using the various methods and then send the results, the accuracy of the information can be verified with a greater certainty. It was found that the initial location determined by the mobile positioning system could be improved through the use of online map services and/or by utilization of mobile camera, accelerometer, and geomagnetic field sensor in the trigonometric method. Another method was the direct searching for the address of the accident location and geocoding. Results showed that transmission by the trigonometric method using mobile capabilities yielded the best results from the sake of positional accuracy. An important shortcoming of this method is that the terrain underneath the user and the building are assumed to be at the same height. On the other hand, when geocoding services are used, results will not be very satisfactory if the location of interest is not famous and recorded beforehand.
Mohammad H. Vahidnia, Farhad Hosseinali, Maryam Shafiei