|
Secretariat
DRAFT –
20000929_gisdisasterresponse; COMMENTS/CORRECTIONS
welcome.. Acwwood@us-state.osis.gov
Improving
Crisis Responsiveness: The Humanitarian Planning Map (HPM) Concept
William
B. Wood
Office
of the Geographer and Global Issues
U.S.
Department of State
Introduction
The common goal of all agencies involved in responding to natural
and man-made disasters is to alleviate suffering.
This simple basis for coordinated action masks a wide range of
complicated activities, competing demands, and chaotic work conditions.
The use of geographic information systems (GIS) tools and remote
sensing data for disaster response is now well established, particularly
in the United States and Europe, but the full potential of these linked
technologies is still far from realized.
The primary obstacle to effective application of geographic
information for crisis preparedness and response is the lack of a
clearly defined and efficient way to collect, analyze, and share
relevant data among participating agencies.
The creation of an Internet-based “humanitarian planning map”
(HPM) process, which would combine both “foundation” data of
baseline geospatial and imagery data with “thematic” data from field
missions, is a much-needed step toward the goal of more effective crisis
management. The proposed
HPM effort would encourage more standardized georeferencing and
interoperability of field data as a means to assist emergency response
managers coping with the multitude of interrelated factors involved in
any disaster.
Effective
response to both natural and man-made disasters requires, at a minimum,
interagency coordination, a knowledge base that can be used to assist
vulnerable groups meet their basic needs, and, the means to analyze
threats to those groups and the effectiveness of intervention efforts.
Several propositions are made in this discussion of why a HPM
process is required for future responses to complex emergencies:
n
geographic information is of critical importance to humanitarian
assistance, public health, peacekeeping, demining, food security, and
economic development efforts;
n
disparate UN groups have a shared need for an accurate
“geographic foundation” and GIS tools for the troubled areas in
which they work;
n
new GIS tools, information management innovations, and the
Internet should be actively used by field missions to better serve
vulnerable groups; and
n
based on UN-led efforts in Kosovo, a regional Humanitarian
Community Information Center (HCIC), with accessible geographic data and
user-friendly GIS tools, would help improve decision making by UN and
NGO field missions grappling with multifaceted aspects of complex
emergencies.
GIS and UN
missions.
GIS
software provides users with a capability to work with different types
of physical feature and socioeconomic data.
Data can be collected, analyzed, displayed, and shared as linked
layers within a spatial framework.
GIS is now widely used in local and national governments (from
crime mapping to land use zoning) and in the private sector (from
delivery route planning to retail marketing).
It is best known for making and updating maps.
But, increasingly, it is being used as a decision support tool
within “wide area” information management systems that tie together
offices that might be physically scattered but that share a common
corporate purpose. In
the United States, such “enterprise GIS” tools are now being used in
local, state, and federal government agencies where officials have a
need to access dispersed data. The
introduction of the Internet is having a dramatic influence on both data
sharing within and among government offices, as well as to the general
public.
GIS
is often associated with global positioning system (GPS) data. In
considering the two complementary technologies, though, the former is a
location-based data management methodology while the latter is a
satellite-based means to precisely pin data to the earth’s surface.
Another invaluable source of geographic information is
satellite-generated remote sensing imagery of the earth’s surface,
which is now becoming more widely available at higher resolutions from
commercial sources. The
trinity of earth observation data, GIS, and GPS, location-linked
“geospatial” systems,
have undergone phenomenal technological leaps over the past decade that
make them individually of great importance to relief operations and
collectively indispensable.
Most
UN agencies now use GIS software to organize at least some data related
to their missions. They
also are taking advantage of the Internet to explain their operations
and disseminate information worldwide. Some are even using remote
sensing imagery and GPS to assist with data collection for specific
projects. Innovative GIS
applications within UN missions have set the institutional stage for
“enterprise wide” GIS uses that can link UN agencies working on
complementary missions in troubled regions, such as the Balkans or the
Horn of Africa.
Several
notable new initiatives by UN missions entail posting GIS-created
information on Internet web sites.
The
UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) uses GIS to make maps of
refugee camps and forced migration flows (www.unhcr.ch/refworld/maps).
The
Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) uses GIS and multispectral
imagery to map crop types and climate patterns that could affect food
production (http://geoweb.fao.org;
www.africover.org).
The
UN Development Program (UNDP) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
are working with the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to map
development projects that address climate change and biodiversity
concerns (www.GEFweb.org/MAP).
The
World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) are
working together on the HealthMap project that uses GIS to help track
Guinea worm eradication in Africa (www.who.int/emc/healthmap).
The
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) uses GIS
as part of its efforts to improve crisis response and to post maps on
its ReliefWeb and Kosovo HCIC sites (www.reliefweb.int/hcic/maps).
These
innovative GIS activities are a sampling from a broader set of extensive
GIS-based data collection and dissemination activities among UN
programs, particularly UNEP/GRID and FAO/GIEWS. Non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) - dealing with issues ranging from humanitarian
concerns to environmental protection and economic development – are
also using GIS identify threatened ecosystems and better target their
programs. GIS-organized
data collection is proving of value to UN, NGO, and donor governments
because they help to answer questions that are fundamental to their
respective missions.
Humanitarian
crises, especially complex emergencies, are rarely dealt with by just
one organization. Instead,
a number of UN and NGO missions have to work together quickly to respond
to fast-breaking threats to large numbers of victims; if responses are
not well coordinated and thoughtfully prioritized, lives are lost.
Concerted action among UN and NGOs would be a great feat under
controlled conditions. It is almost a “mission impossible” under the
chaotic conditions that most relief operations operate.
A GIS-structured data sharing network among UN and NGO agencies
will not alleviate causal factors that drive the chaos, but its should
help to make responses more effective.
UN Recommendations about Geographic
Information
Effective
use of GIS based data collection is a goal that will take time to
develop. Current GIS
programs by UN missions are still largely ad hoc and project specific,
focusing on map production rather than data management.
With new Internet-GIS capabilities now available, the time is
opportune to follow up on previous recommendations by UN panels and
begin implementing an integrated geographic information approach to
crisis-prone areas. The
interagency Geographic Information Support Team (GIST) report,
“Structured Humanitarian Assistance Reporting” (SHARE), describes
the need for geospatial data standards and GIS technologies within a
“common frame of reference” if UN humanitarian missions are to be
more effective:
“From
the earliest phases of an emergency, certain information is critically
important for a broad spectrum of actors involved in emergency-response
decision-making. This
information includes the locations and numbers of affected people, the
extent and distribution of damage and needs, the locations o9f
assistance projects and other resources, and factors affecting the
security of the affected population and assistance workers.
Amidst the chaotic and rapidly changing events of an emergency,
no single organization or entity has all of this information.
The more time required to collect and process it, the longer it
takes to organize a response to assist the victims.” -
SHARE, GIST, April 2000.
Apart
from GIST’s SHARE recommendations, a number of UN reports over the
past few years have advocated a more systematic approach to geographic
information collection and dissemination and the need for more effective
management of georeferenced data to assist fully with UN
decision-making. Such data
is of importance not only to UN-led relief efforts and peacekeeping, but
also to long term economic development goals, natural resource
conservation (especially water and soils), and public health promotion.
Conceptually, social scientists have long drawn linkages between
natural resource scarcity and internecine conflict on the one hand and
between economic development and public health on the other.
A GIS methodology enables social scientists to quantify and
visualize sustainable development indicators that can determine the fate
of vulnerable groups in regions at high risk for recurring violence and
disasters.
Two
types of recommendations coming out of UN meetings and agencies over the
past half dozen years have pertinence to the goals of the HPM project:
those that recommend collection of “core data” needed by UN missions
and those that recommend the interagency processes needed to apply such
data. What is remarkable
about these recommendations, coming out of very different groups of
international experts, is their similarity both in terms of the
geographic information that they believe is needed and the ways that
information should be used to achieve UN-defined goals.
The selective quotes here represent a much broader body of work
that underscore the relevance of geographic information for practical
problem solving from local to global scales.
Georeferenced
data that are accurate, timely, and relevant remain an elusive goal for
most agencies working in poor regions.
Sustainable
development. “Ten
high-priority core data sets central to many types of studies that
produce environmental assessment information and sustainable development
strategies were identified: land use/land cover, demographics,
hydrology, infrastructure, climatology, topography, economy, soils, air
quality, water quality…the participants then agreed that methods must
be established to develop, maintain, and make openly available
accessible core data..” – UNDP/UNEP sponsored International
Symposium on Core Data Needs for Environmental Assessment and
Sustainable Development Strategies, vol. 1, p. 2, Bangkok, Thailand,
Nov. 15-18, 1994.
Earth
science. “In the
beginning the Global Terrestrial Observing System (GTOS) will
concentrate on land-use and land-cover change, water resources, and
climate change. GTOS is
thus helping to obtain better understanding of some of the basic issues
confronting sustainable human development:
food and food availability, freshwater supply and demand, changes
in terrestrial ecosystems and their life support capacities, etc.…GTOS
will foster equitable partnerships between data providers and users…By
drawing together existing but disparate databases, sites and networks
into a common framework, and harmonizing measurements and terminology,
GTOS will increase substantially the usage and value of terrestrial
ecosystems data and information for scientific assessment, development
planning purposes and policy formulation..” – GTOS
Implementation Plan, version 2.0 December 1998, p. 3;
GTOS sponsors: FAO, ICSU, UNEP, UNESCO, and WMO.
Refugee
protection. “Operational
support using geographic information in refugee-relief operations is one
of the main areas of focus of the UNHCR since 1995.
In the emergency phase, at the onset of refugee operations, rapid
decisions must be made regarding logistical support and their political
implications. These
decisions must be based on the highest quality and most up-to-date
information available..” submission by UNHCR Geographical Information
Unit for program entitled Establishment
of regional GIS focal points for operational support of geographic
information in refugee-hosting areas, 2000.
A structured
interagency process for using a common “geographic foundation” for
UN missions remains largely unimplemented.
Crisis
information. “In
terms of mitigation of and response to natural disasters and
humanitarian response to population displacements, GIS contributes to
laying the foundation for information management analyses and mapping
products, and serve as a coordination tool by bringing together
different types of information and provide synthetic overviews and
detailed analyses of the situation..
Input data to GIS include: field data, such as population
distribution in the area of interest, GPS data on exact geographic
positions of the parameters to be analyzed, such as damaged buildings,
and remote sensing images, such as satellite data on extent of fires..
It is critical that governments and organizations that collect and act
on this type of information agree on the critical core data content and
the corresponding standard formats in which it should be shared.”
- Draft Report of the Secretary General on Strengthening
of the coordination of emergency humanitarian assistance of the United
Nations, April 2000, p. 18.
Global
information. “The UN
Geographic Information Working Group (UNGIWG) was established in March
2000…to coordinate activities and formulate policies concerning
geographic information within the UN system.. [it will] undertake the
development and maintenance of a common UN…global database consisting
of basic cartographic elements and toponymic information that would
serve as a common geo-referenced framework for integrating information
for substantive programs.. Geographic information is vital for the
execution of many UN operations…” – statement describing the
endorsement of the UN
Consultative Committee on Programme and Operational Questions,
Resolution of 30 March 2000.
Peacekeeping.
“Proper melding of these data and data gathered subsequent to
deployment by the various components of a peace operation and their use
with GIS could create powerful tools for tracing needs and problems in
the mission area and for tracking the impact of action plans.
GIS specialists should be assigned to every mission team,
together with GIS training resources.” – Report of the
Panel on United Nations Peace Operations (21 August, 2000, p. 43
(“Brahimi report”).
These
quotes from disparate UN organized groups reinforce the point that major
UN agencies involved in emergency response recognize the importance of
GIS based data collection, analysis, and dissemination.
This paper argues that they need to make use of shared “core
sets” of geographic data that underlie their field missions.
Such an integrative “enterprise-wide” activity would boost
each agency’s data access, allow it to make more comprehensive queries
about the context in which crises occur, and help it collaborate better
with other agencies working in the vicinity.
Such an effort would not in any way infringe on the independent
authorities of participating agencies, but would encourage them to make
at least some data they already collect available in a structured and
shareable data format. A
GIS framework provides the least common denominator for such
mission-relevant data because they are inherently location based.
Traditionally,
each UN agency has developed its own GIS-based standards and procedures,
which have impeded robust inter-agency data sharing.
Even with support among GIS practitioners in the major UN
agencies, implementation of an interagency “enterprise-wide”
geographic information strategy will require guidance from the UN
Secretariat. For standards
harmonization to work among UN agencies in the field, a commitment by
agency leaders is needed to ensure clear directives, assigned
responsibilities, and adequate resources and staffing.
Donors, in turn, must also play a leadership role by insisting on
more effective and efficient interagency information management for
crisis response – particularly standardized reporting formats to
enable data sharing, common definitions, and georeferencing.
The
HPM project aims to support interagency sharing of geographic
information through two approaches: by
providing agencies involved in a region with a detailed “geographic
foundation” consisting of multiple geospatial data layers and remote
sensing imagery; and by supporting the establishment of a regional HCIC
that will provide technical GIS and georeferencing support for
UN-supported missions and assistance in their provision of shareable
“thematic field data” to UN headquarters, donor governments, and the
public. The HPM project
will focus initially on the Horn of Africa because that region covers
the range life-threatening crises and is the locale of numerous UN, NGO,
and national programs, some of which already employ GIS tools.
Kosovo Precedent
The
prototype for providing an interagency geographic information
coordination was Kosovo, where path-breaking progress has been made in
the use of GIS-enhanced data for civil-military cooperation.
Beginning in the fall of 1998, a Department of State team worked
with UNHCR officials in Pristina as well as newly arrived members of the
OSCE-led Kosovo Verification Mission to set up ways to share data
related to internally displaced persons and security concerns,
especially landmines. The
expulsion of ethnic Albanian Kosovars into Macedonia, Albania, and
Montenegro in the spring of 1999 forced the suspension of GIS support
efforts. This project
was reestablished in the early summer with UN agencies and NATO forces
in Macedonia and Albania. A
major new GIS-based assessment by the US National Imagery and Mapping
Agency (NIMA) documented the extent of damage to dwellings throughout
Kosovo. These data were
used by UNHCR as the lead humanitarian agency upon its return in order
to make preliminary assessments of relief needs.
The UN-led GIST group also developed a Rapid Village Assessment
Form that made it possible for UN and NGO workers to conduct a
standardized and georeferenced survey throughout Kosovo as refugees
returned en masse to devastated villages.
A
year after the return of about one million Kosovars, the UN Mission in
Kosovo and NATO forces there are well established and have a functioning
Humanitarian Community Information Center (HCIC).
The UN/OCHA managed HCIC serves all agencies in Kosovo and
provides a number of GIS products and services, including an active
Internet site. One of its
more important functions has been the establishment of place codes
(P-codes) that are used to assist with georeferencing data collected by
the various missions. While
Kosovo shows that a HPM can become operational, its implementation was
far from smooth. The
Kosovo HPM took months to develop, imagery support was belated and
problematic, and field deployment was not well integrated with ongoing
relief operations. Lessons
learned from the Kosovo HPM project include:
n
accurate and current geographic information is essential for
effective relief operations;
n
a customer demand for GIS services will only emerge if those
services are conveniently located, reliable, and prompt; and
n
GIS tools and remote sensing imagery must be deployed to the
field in a way that will benefit both civilian and military agencies.
HPM for the Horn
of Africa
Kosovo
was unique in may ways – the involvement of NATO, the geopolitical
concerns over refugees and instability spilling into western Europe, and
the rapidity and size of the mass expulsion and returns – resulting in
a unique response involving almost all UN agencies, tens of thousands of
KFOR troops, and large numbers of non-government organizations (NGOs)
working intensively in a relatively small area.
Other crisis areas are also unique, with their own combinations
of war, civil unrest, poverty, and natural disasters.
The Horn of Africa epitomizes a region that has all of the above,
compelling a large UN involvement and blurring the lines between crisis
response and long term economic development.
The
Horn of Africa – in this case defined as Djibouti, Uganda, Somalia,
Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, and the Sudan – is the regional focus for
the HPM project because of recurring humanitarian crises involving both
intra-state ethnic and tribal conflicts, inter-state wars, mass internal
displacements and refugee flows, and a variety of natural disasters,
from droughts to floods. Of
the roughly 160 million people in this region, almost half live in
natural disaster-prone areas, particularly drought; many suffer from
chronic malnutrition and low life expectancy.
These life-threatening crises engage all UN agencies, numerous
NGOs, and many governments; they involve thousands of international
relief workers and costing donor countries hundreds of millions of
dollars annually. Several
UN agencies are already engaged in important GIS projects in the Horn of
Africa, but thus far these efforts have been only loosely coordinated,
if at all. Improved
Internet- and GIS-based information management should help make
information sharing among all UN and multilateral operations in this
chronically threatened region more effective and efficient.
Famine
elimination. The
Administrative Committee on Coordination (ACC) proposal to eliminate
food insecurity in the Horn of Africa sets out an ambitious goal that
would require unprecedented collaboration among
international-national-local level agencies.
Well-focused interagency cooperation on such linked crises as
rural poverty, recurring drought, soil erosion, and infrastructure
failure, in turn, demands a shared geographic information and common
analytical tools. The
problem is not so much a lack of information about any one of these
problems than it is poor access by those who need it most and confusion
among relief and development agencies over how to apply such information
for famine prevention.
“Early
warning systems provide the information on which to plan for relief
intervention… The main immediate concern to be addressed is the weak
link between the information generated by early warning systems and the
capacity to act on it… at
both national and regional levels there are weaknesses in the
institutional arrangements which bring together governments and donors
to take decisions on required interventions with ample lead time.
In the longer term, there will be further need to invest in
systems that improve the accuracy of predictions by taking advantage of
emergent information sharing and communications technologies.”
ACC
Interagency Task Force on the UN Response to Long Term Food
Security, Agricultural Development and Related Aspects in the Horn of
Africa, September, 2000, p. 27.
HPM Implementation
The
Horn of Africa thus presents an opportunity to demonstrate the value in
improved data sharing amongst agencies working on complementary
missions, both in terms of short term disaster response as well as long
term sustainable development. The
Horn of Africa HPM (HAHPM) project has three overlapping goals:
n
integration of GIS-compatible data, interactive maps, and remote
sensing imagery for field missions coping with complex emergencies;
n
application of new Internet-linked
technologies for collection and dissemination of geospatial data among
UN-led missions planning for and responding to natural and man-made
crises; and
n
support for UN/OCHA’s ReliefWeb as the Internet focal point for
humanitarian assistance data among UN agencies and NGOs and for its
Field Information Support (FIS) effort.
ReliefWeb
platform. The proposed
Internet site for hosting HAHPM is UN/OCHA’s ReliefWeb Map Centre.
ReliefWeb is the primary UN focal point for dissemination of
humanitarian assistance data to the international community.
ReliefWeb’s Map Centre already hosts a large collection of
thematic maps of interest to humanitarian agencies.
The Map Centre is developing the capability to use new internet
map server software (ArcIMS) that will allow users to interactively
query crisis related data, download specific data fields, and build
their own customized maps. The
project will also explore the use of data compression software (such as
MrSid) that allows large imagery data sets to be distributed over the
Internet. The HAHPM project will provide the Map Centre with an
unprecedented level of geospatial data and imagery for the Horn region,
helping the Centre to move beyond the display of static thematic and
reference maps to become a virtual warehouse of geographic information
that can be queried, analyzed, downloaded, and displayed by any relief
worker or policy maker with access to the Internet.
Geographic
foundation. Geospatial
data types and sources will vary greatly. Some can be provided by the
USG, but others will need to come from UN agencies and others working in
the region. The
“geospatial foundation” aims to be an accurate, well-documented
(with clear metadata), and standardized spatial framework within which
thematic, operational, and local data can be consistently
“georeferenced” and updated to ensure compatibility and currency
among different data types produced by different organizations.
As was demonstrated by the HCIC in Kosovo, standardized place
codes (P-codes) are an essential element for linking independent but
complementary databases. The
project also aims to explore how the increasing availability of
commercial imagery might be productively applied to crisis management
– from land use to public health.
Selective
data layers that would become part of the geospatial foundation include:
Digital
Chart of the World (DCW) – for roads, coastlines, etc.
Geocover
and Landcover - for land
use and other categories
International
and first order administrative boundaries
Watersheds – for modeling
floods and drought impacts
Digital Terrain Elevation
Data - for topography
LandSat imagery – 30 meter
orthorectified imagery
Place Codes (P-codes) –
georeferenced place names for structuring data bases
LandScan -
population distribution data sets
Field
support. The collection
and organization of geographic foundation data and remote sensing
imagery is the first benchmark for the Horn of Africa HPM.
All such data will be releasable to the UN/OCHA for its
information support to UN-led field operations in the Horn of Africa.
Foundation data are those that can be provided by remote sensing
platforms, are relatively static, and/or are based on traditional paper
map sources. Once the HPM
geospatial foundation is built, relief agencies in this crisis plagued
region will be better able to use Internet-distributed and UN
standardized geographic information embedded in the foundation data
layers for improved crisis planning, coordination, and implementation.
Field
data, in contrast to foundation data, is more thematic, dynamic, and
localized – requiring “ground truthing” (local validation) and
coordination with local and national agencies.
Such data might include disease outbreaks, locations of IDPs,
drought areas, landmine fields, and even relief operations.
Each of these types of data might be considered a thematic data
layer within an “enterprise” GIS environment.
For these data layers to be interoperable, timely, and useful
within a decentralized network, data managers will need to take
responsibility for them. While
this might at first appear as an extra burden, in reality, most agencies
are already collecting such data – the only difference know is that
some of those data need to be consistently georeferenced and made
available.
Interagency
data sharing requires much more than pledges of support and good
intentions. It depends upon
an active network of data managers, representing each participating
agency, who are willing to establish mechanisms for more efficient data
sharing. Field support for
data collection and dissemination will need to function at three levels:
n
international level, where a HCIC-type technical support facility
can provide regional assistance and guidance to participating agencies;
n
national level where existing relationships between UN data
managers and national ministries need to be fully supported; and
n
subnational district/provincial level where field operators must
work with local officials, myriad foreign and local NGOs, and, most
important of all, the groups being assisted.
Such
a group of data managers would be multidisciplinary, representing
agencies with very different missions, but with a common purpose of
using GIS capabilities to improve their own data support functions as
well as a commitment to make at least some of their agency’s data
available for inter-agency data sharing.
Data managers are invariably busy and work within the constraints
of their own agency’s data handling protocols, security concerns, and
reporting formats. A HCIC
GIS technical support facility must be able to demonstrate the value
that foundation data and standards harmonization brings to each mission,
as well as the critical function an interagency facility would play in
terms of broader crisis response planning.
The value of a regional HCIC would rise dramatically should
another major humanitarian crisis erupt, as it will invariably in the
Horn of Africa.
Conclusion
The Horn of Africa and other crisis prone regions present
enormous challenges to the international community.
Even with more effective international responses, the population
vulnerable to recurring disasters will continue to grow.
Many UN and NGO missions are making bold efforts to overcome
infrastructure obstacles, funding shortfalls, and even security threats
to their personnel to improve services to desperately poor groups.
GIS tools and Internet disseminated geographic data offer no
panacea for these difficult missions.
What they do offer, though, is a more geographically informed and
systematic approach to mission decision-making.
A
GIS-based HPM is based on the fundamental assumption that relief, peace,
and development operations in crisis regions have a common need for
reliable and timely geographic information.
Each of their missions would be better informed if it had access
to at least some of the location-based data collected by other missions
– but such data sharing transactions require georeferencing standards
and functioning telecommunications to be efficient.
Field missions funded by donors should be dissuaded from data
collection redundancy and persuaded to share “core data fields” with
other agencies undertaking complementary tasks.
The result would not be instant or easy answers to long-standing
dilemmas, but rather a better understanding of the intertwined linkages
that determine how populations will survive hunger, violence, and
disease. Collective efforts to assist vulnerable groups would be
bolstered if agencies were able to work together with similar GIS tools
that allow field officers - regardless of whether they were working for
refugee, health, peacekeeping, demining, agricultural or environmental
agencies - to effectively target their services to where they are most
needed.
In
sum, the Horn of Africa HPM program outlined here seeks to jump start
interagency collaboration through both the provision of much-improved
foundation data as well as better technical GIS support in a
crisis-prone region. The
goal is simple, better information for better decision-making, but
implementation will depend on the willingness of participating agencies
to embrace new information management systems and to work within a
collaborative problem-solving process.
In this paper “geospatial” data refers to data that is largely
attributed to descriptions of earth features and their cartographic
representation and measurement; geographic information is broader and
refers to socio-economic, demographic, political, and other data of
relevance to the relationship between people and their environment.
|
