GIS-based crisis communication1324038/... · 2019-06-13 · Google Fusion Tables. I prototypen...

IN DEGREE PROJECT THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT,SECOND CYCLE, 30 CREDITS

, STOCKHOLM SWEDEN 2019

GIS-based crisis communicationA platform for authorities to communicate with the public during wildfire

FELIX ALTHÉN BERGMAN

EVELINA ÖSTBLOM

KTH ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGYSCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Preface By finalizing our education with this thesis, at the Transport and Geoinformation Technology master’s program at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, we were able to combine our main interests into something that could provide inspiration to further develop one of the most important functions of our society. Our main interests include communication and the behaviour of people combined with the power of geographic data and geographic information systems. These lead us not only to apply for the master’s program in Transport and Geoinformation Technology, but also to choose the topic of crisis communication using maps for the thesis.

Throughout the thesis work we have had a lot of support from Agima Management AB, where the work has been conducted. Therefore, we would like to thank everyone there for the support and ideas they provided. A special thanks to our supervisor Mikael Grönkvist for swift and accurate feedback as well as guidance when we needed it.

Besides that, Susanne Ingvander at MSB deserves a sincere thanks for taking her time providing us with information, feedback and data. Further, we would like to express our gratitude to our supervisor at KTH, Andrea Nascetti, for taking his time and helping us solve technical errors during the development of the prototype.

Finally, thanks to our supervisor Gyözö Gidofalvi and examiner Prof. Yifang Ban for supervising and examining the thesis.

Felix Althén Bergman & Evelina Östblom

Stockholm, Sweden

June 2019

Abstract Today, people are used to having technology as a constant aid. This also sets expectations that information should always be available. This, together with ongoing climate change that has led to more natural disasters, has laid the foundation for the need to change the methodology for how geographical data is collected, compiled and visualized when used for crisis communication.

This study explores how authorities, at present, communicate with the public during a crisis and how this can be done in an easier and more comprehensible way, with the help of Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The goal is to present a new way of collecting, compiling and visualizing geographical data in order to communicate, as an authority, with the public during a crisis. This has been done using a case study with focus on wildfires. Therefore, most of the work consisted of the creation of a prototype, CMAP – Crisis Management and Planning, that visualizes fire-related data.

The basic work of the prototype consisted of determining what data that exists and is necessary for the information to be complete and easily understood together with how the data is best implemented. The existing data was retrieved online or via a scheduled API request. Event-related data, which is often created in connection with the event itself, was given a common structure and an automatic implementation into the prototype using Google Fusion Tables. In the prototype, data was visualized in two interactive map-based sections. These sections focused on providing the user with the information that might be needed if one fears that they are within an affected location or providing the user with general preparatory information in different counties. Finally, a non-map-based section was created that allowed the public to help authorities and each other via crowdsource data. This was collected in a digital form which was then directly visualized in the prototype’s map-based sections.

The result of this showed, among other things, that automatic data flows are a good alternative for avoiding manual data handling and thus enabling a more frequent update of the data. Furthermore, it also showed the importance of having a common structure for which data to be included and collected in order to create a communication platform. Finally, by visualizing of dynamic polygon data in an interactive environment a development in crisis communication that can benefit the public’s understanding of the situation is achieved.

This thesis is limited to the functionality and layout provided by the Google platform, including Google Earth Engine, Google Forms, Google Fusion Tables etc.

Keywords: GIS, crisis communication, forest fire, Google Earth Engine, data management

Sammanfattning I dagens samhälle är människan van vid teknik som ett ständigt hjälpmedel. Detta sätter också förväntningar på att information alltid ska vara tillgänglig och uppdaterad. Detta tillsammans med pågående klimatförändringar som lett till fler och svårare naturkatastrofer har lagt grunden till att det finns ett behov av att förändra hur man samlar in, sammanställer och visualiserar geografiska data som används för kommunikation i en krissituation.

Denna studie utforskar hur myndigheter, i dagsläget, kommunicerar med allmänheten vid en krissituation och hur detta kan göras på ett enklare och mer givande sätt med hjälp av GIS. Målet är att visa ett nytt sätt att samla in, sammanställa och visualisera geografiska data för att, som myndighet, kommunicera med allmänheten under en kris. Detta har gjorts som i en fallstudie med fokus på skogs- och gräsbränder. Merparten av arbetet bestod därför av framtagande av en prototyp, CMAP – Crisis Management and Planning som visualiserar brandrelaterade data.

Grundarbetet till prototypen bestod av att fastställa vilken data som finns och är nödvändig för att informationen skulle bli lättförstådd och komplett samt hur denna bäst implementeras. Den existerande data som implementerades hämtades online eller via ett schemalagt anrop av APIer. Händelserelaterade data skapas ofta i samband med själva händelsen och därför skapades en gemensam struktur och direktimplementation till prototypen för denna data med hjälp av Google Fusion Tables. I prototypen visualiserades data i två interaktiva kartbaserade sektioner. Dessa sektioner fokuserade kring att förse användaren med den information som kan behövas om man befarar att man befinner sig på en drabbad plats eller att förse användaren med allmän förberedande information inom olika län. Slutligen skapades även en icke kartbaserad sektion som möjliggjorde att allmänheten kan hjälpa myndigheter och varandra genom ”crowdsource” data. Denna samlades in i ett digitalt formulär som sedan direkt visualiserades i prototypens kartbaserade delar.

Resultatet av detta visade bland annat att automatiska dataflöden är ett bra alternativ för att slippa manuell hantering av data och därmed möjliggöra en mer frekvent uppdatering. Vidare visade det även på vikten av att ha en gemensam struktur för vilken data som ska inkluderas och samlas in för att skapa en kommunikationsplattform. Slutligen är visualisering av dynamiska polygondata i en interaktiv miljö en utveckling av kriskommunikation som kan gynna förståelsen för situationen hos allmänheten.

Studien är begränsad till att skapa en plattform baserad på den inbyggda funktionaliteten och designen som erbjuds i Googles plattform, detta inkluderat Google Earth Engine, Google Formulär, Google Fusion Tables etc.

Nyckelord: GIS, kriskommunikation, skogsbrand, Google Earth Engine, datahantering

List of figures Figure 1. Progress report of wildfires in Gävleborg County, 2018-07-18 20:00. ............................... 9 Figure 2. The front page of Krisinformation.se, 2019-05-16. ............................................................11 Figure 3. The different pages of the application provided by Krisinformation.se, 2019-06-05. .... 12 Figure 4. Schematic description of the research strategy for the thesis. ....................................... 16 Figure 5. The compiled fictive information regarding the evacuated areas presented in the prototype. ......................................................................................................................................... 19 Figure 6. The compiled fictive information regarding the estimated fire areas presented in the prototype. ........................................................................................................................................ 20 Figure 7. The compiled fictive information regarding the suspended lakes presented in the prototype. ........................................................................................................................................ 20 Figure 8. Parts of the fire ban data compiled in a fusion table used in the prototype. ................. 21 Figure 9. The initial page of the prototype, 2019-05-13 11:00. ........................................................ 29 Figure 10. The prototype’s main menu 2019-05-13 11:00. ................................................................ 30 Figure 11. The location-based information section of the prototype 2019-05-13 11:00. .................. 31 Figure 12. Showing the drop-down selector and how STA announcements are presented, 2019-05-13 11:00. ........................................................................................................................................ 32 Figure 13. The visualization if no event is in vicinity to the chosen location, 2019-05-13 11:00. ... 33 Figure 14. Information presented when chosen location is in vicinity to an estimated fire, 2019-05-13 11.00. ........................................................................................................................................ 34 Figure 15. Information presented when chosen location is within estimated fire area 2019-05-13 11:00. ................................................................................................................................................. 35 Figure 16. Information presented when chosen location is within safe distance to a fire, 2019-05-13 11:00. ............................................................................................................................................. 36 Figure 17. The initial area-based information section of the prototype, showing the national information, 2019-05-13 11:00........................................................................................................... 37 Figure 18. Information displayed about two current events, 2019-05-13 11.00. ............................. 38 Figure 19. The area-based information section for Stockholm county, without any information visualized in the map, 2019-05-13 11.00. .......................................................................................... 39 Figure 20. The area-based information section for Stockholm county, with all information displayed in the map, 2019-05-13 11:00. ........................................................................................... 40 Figure 21. The map showing the fire, suspended lake, evacuated area, possible evacuation zones and an available evacuation accommodation, 2019-05-13 11.00. ..................................................... 41 Figure 22. The map showing the fictive fire, suspended lake and evacuated area, 2019-05-13 11.00. .......................................................................................................................................................... 42 Figure 23. The map showing the fictive fire and the Possible future evacuation zones, 2019-05-13 11.00. ................................................................................................................................................. 43 Figure 24. The general information in the Stockholm county, valid 2019-05-13 11.00. ................. 44 Figure 25. Post event information, 2019-05-13 11:00. ...................................................................... 44 Figure 26. The help menu of the prototype, 2019-05-13 11:00. ....................................................... 45 Figure 27. The form for providing evacuation accommodation. .................................................. 46

List of tables Table 1. Data used in the location-based information section of the prototype. ......................... 27 Table 2. Data used in the area-based information section of the prototype. ............................... 28

List of Abbreviations API Application Program Interface

CEP Civil Emergency Planning

GCS Google Cloud Storage

GEE Google Earth Engine

GIS Geographic Information System

GUI Graphical User Interface

ID Identifier

KML Key Markup Language

KTH Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (Royal Institute of Technology)

MSB Myndigheten för Samhällsskydd och Beredskap (Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency)

ODC Open Data Cube

SMHI Sveriges Metrologiska och Hydrologiska Institut (Swedish Metrological and Hydrological Institute)

STA Trafikverket (Swedish Traffic Agency)

VMA Viktigt meddelande till allmänheten (Important Announcement to the Public)

Table of contents

1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1

1.1 Background ..................................................................................................................... 1

1.2 Purpose and research question ....................................................................................... 2

1.3 Limitations ...................................................................................................................... 2

1.4 Target group ................................................................................................................... 2

2 Literature study ........................................................................................................ 3

2.1 Related work ................................................................................................................... 3

2.1.1 Crisis communication ....................................................................................... 3

2.1.2 Alternative prototype platforms ....................................................................... 3

2.1.3 Data .................................................................................................................. 4

2.1.4 Visualization in crisis communication ............................................................... 5

2.1.5 International monitoring of fire crisis communication ...................................... 7

2.2 Situation analysis ............................................................................................................ 7

2.2.1 Krisinformation.se .......................................................................................... 10

2.3 Needs analysis ............................................................................................................... 13

3 Methodology .......................................................................................................... 15

3.1 Research strategy ......................................................................................................... 15

3.2 Case study ..................................................................................................................... 16

3.3 Definitions ..................................................................................................................... 17

3.4 Choice of methods for data collection........................................................................... 18

3.4.1 Static data ...................................................................................................... 18

3.4.2 Dynamic data ................................................................................................. 18

3.5 Specification of data ..................................................................................................... 22

3.6 Data processing ............................................................................................................ 25

3.6.1 Generating Possible future evacuation areas ................................................. 25

3.7 User interface design .................................................................................................... 25

3.8 Visualization of data...................................................................................................... 26

3.8.1 Location-based data ....................................................................................... 26

3.8.2 Area-based data ............................................................................................. 27

4 Results ................................................................................................................... 29

4.1 Initial information ......................................................................................................... 29

4.2 Main menu .................................................................................................................... 29

4.3 Map based sections ....................................................................................................... 30

4.3.1 Location-based information ........................................................................... 30

4.3.2 Area-based information .................................................................................. 37

4.4 Help menu..................................................................................................................... 45

5 Discussion ............................................................................................................... 47

5.1 Data .............................................................................................................................. 47

5.2 Data processing ............................................................................................................ 48

5.3 User interface design and visualization ......................................................................... 48

5.4 Google Earth Engine platform ...................................................................................... 49

5.5 Flaws in the prototype .................................................................................................. 50

6 Conclusions ............................................................................................................. 51

7 Future work ............................................................................................................ 53

References .................................................................................................................... 55

Appendix A – Interview with representatives from MSB ................................................... 59

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1 Introduction

1.1 Background Societies have always been changing over time, people learn from and develop each other as well as the structure and technique of the society. Today's society is no exception since the digitization influences almost all organizations. Hospitals are dependent on a working IT-system, more stores are available online than on the streets and whole professions might soon be exchanged for a robot or online solution. This does not only change the way companies and authorities' function, but also what people expect and demand from them. When customers can track deliveries that they have ordered from shipping to arrival in real time, do a whole week’s worth of grocery shopping from a mobile phone or meet a doctor online at any time of the day, the expectation of correct and personalized information, in real time, is bigger than ever before and still growing. This kind of expectation persists, and most likely when it is of most importance, in times of crisis. When an incident occurs, which puts the society and its citizens in direct or indirect danger, the need for relevant and accurate information on what is happening, what will happen and what there is to do in order to be safe is as most crucial.

There are countless number of causes of a national crisis. Some of them being man made and others being natural disasters such as flooding, tsunamis, forest fires. Today the natural disasters are a common cause for a national or even international crisis, e.g., the flooding caused by the monsoon in the south of Asia in 2017, the 2018 Attica wildfires in Greece and the “Camp Fire” which was the deadliest forest fire in Canadas history (Baldassari, 2018).

Due to the climate changes and thereby the global warming, changing of winds and rain, both the frequency and severity of the natural disasters are to increase globally (Flannigan, Stocks and Wotton, 2000).

In Sweden, when a national crisis, local crisis, or bigger incident that could lead to a crisis occurs the authorities are responsible to inform the people affected. The responsible authorities are both the effected counties, the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) and other involved authorities, which could be the police, fire department etc. The information is today communicated using several different channels to make sure that as many people as possible can take part of the information as quickly as possible. The initial, acute information called Viktigt Meddelande till Allmänheten (VMA), in English Important Announcement to the Public, is always communicated through the local radio, TV and from Krisinformation.se through push notices in the application that MSB provides. The VMAs can also be communicated through social media or other applications. Depending on your location, VMAs can be received through an outdoor alarm system called Hesa Fredrik, as well as through text or voice messages to phones (Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, 2018b).

According to a survey carried out by MSB about people's general attitude about the authorities during a crisis, based on previous experiences, the public was positive to how the initial instructions were communicated and could quickly act on the recommendations from the authorities. Despite this, the myth that the public's reaction to a crisis would be to act irrationally

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and cause panic still lingers (Coombs and Holladay, 2010). This could lead to the authorities withholding parts of the information to avoid amplifying the panic that is, due to the myth, thought to occur in conjunction with a crisis. This withholding of the information could be the explanation of why the survey participants issued that the information communicated during the crisis did not meet all expectations. The expectations that were not met were those of the quality of the information, which was considered poor and the lack of compilation of the information which was published on different authorities’ websites. This yielded that the information was hard to understand and problematic to place geographically. However, an expectation that was met was the update frequency. Hence, the frequency of which the information is published is not an issue for the public, but rather the content, quality, compilation and presentation of the information (Coombs and Holladay, 2010).

1.2 Purpose and research question The purpose of this thesis is to find new ways to create, manage, compile and visualize geographical data presented by the authorities to the public during a crisis, in order to ensure effective crisis communication. This includes analysing the public’s information need, proposing new workflow structures for the authorities and inclusion of new data presented in a prototype of a communication platform. This is to make sure that as many people as possible receive the information necessary, that the information is easy to interpret and understand, and that the handling of the crisis will be as simple as possible for all parties involved. Hence, the research question for this thesis is

How can authorities’ geographical data be collected, compiled and visualized using GIS to assure an effective crisis communication to the public?

1.3 Limitations To be able to make a detailed analysis of what information is needed during a crisis and how that information is best collected, compiled and presented, the thesis is limited to a specific type of crisis. Hence, only larger fires, such as forest fires and grass fires will be handled in the prototype. Another limitation is that only the communication between authority and the public is handled, thereby excluding the internal communication between authorities. Lastly, the chosen platform to build the prototype limits some functionality since only the predetermined functions and tools in the prototype can be applied when building the prototype.

1.4 Target group In line with the purpose for the study, the target group for the thesis is indirectly the general public, since they will be the group that hopefully will benefit from the suggested communication platform that meets their expectations regarding crisis communication. More directly, the target group is MSB that can use the results of the needs analysis as well as the suggested communication platform as a proposition on how a future, more simplified and efficient platform can be structured.

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2 Literature study The literature study provides an overview of the previous studies in the field of crisis communication together with an overview of today's situation regarding the communication between authorities and the public during a national crisis in Sweden. Lastly an overview of the requested changes in the communication structure is briefly mentioned.

2.1 Related work

2.1.1 Crisis communication Crisis management is a well analysed topic that has been studied in countless number of articles, studies and theses. Since progression in this field could lead to a palpable abatement in casualties, deaths and properties affected. There are several aspects to consider when studying crisis management and of the most important ones is crisis communication, which have also proved to be one of the biggest challenges in crisis management. Therefore, much of the research that studies crisis management handles crisis communication in different ways (Dransch, Rotzoll and Poser, 2010).

There are several studies that purely handle communication with the public during a crisis, such as “The Handbook of Crisis Communication”. This report defines crisis communication to consist of collecting, processing and distributing the information that is needed to address an ongoing crisis. Besides that, it describes different attitudes and behaviours within the public that can be generated by how and when information is distributed, where the importance of consistency of the information was emphasized. This means that information should be disseminated through the same communication channels, at approximately the same time and with a similar content for the public's confidence in the authority to remain. As an extension, a study on how the communication is commonly implemented was performed and the importance of informing the public on how they should behave was highlighted. It was stressed that the public should be informed with instructions and adjusting information that is easy to comprehend (Coombs and Holladay, 2010).

2.1.2 Alternative prototype platforms

2.1.2.1 Open Data Cube Open Data Cube (ODC) is an open source solution where one can access, manage and analyse geographical data. It provides a foundation of multiple data architecture solutions such as Africa Regional Data Cube, Digital Earth Australia and more. ODC is developed mainly for analysis of temporally-rich earth observation raster data. However, one can also analyse data such as elevation models, geophysical grids, model outputs and interpolated surfaces that can be loaded in to the platform. The platform provides the service of cataloguing large amounts of geographical data. ODC also enables Python based API for the user to query and access data. One potential flaw of the ODC platform is that it solely provides raster data analytics, hence, vector data analyses are not available (Open Data Cube, 2019).

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2.1.2.2 Mapbox Mapbox is a platform where the user can create their own interactive maps using HTML, CSS, JavaScript and their own WebGL-based JavaScript library. With Mapbox, one can either create one’s own data or add them as an API. Mapbox provides the possibility of creating interactive Web Applications, however, this feature only supports vector datasets. However, raster datasets can be uploaded as tiles but doing so, they are not editable. Mapbox Studio is a feature in Mapbox which lets the user design and style its map to a great extent. This includes for example custom fonts and styles depending on zoom level. Map box also provides the opportunity for the user to analyse data using Turf.js which is an open source JavaScript library. One downside of Mapbox is that it is not free of charge (Mapbox, 2019).

2.1.2.3 Not using a predefined platform One solution when building a platform is to not rely on an existing platform, instead developing it from scratch. Doing so, one must build the design for a web application, create the necessary server functionalities, crowdsource implementation and collect all data needed for presenting the information. This gives the developer greater freedom when it comes to visualization and custom functionalities, however it requires more extensive work since there are no predefined functions or basemaps etc. provided.

In the development of a platform, client-side and server-side applications has to be set up. Using pre-existing client-side libraries, e.g., Bootstrap, JQuery and AngularJS, one can develop the front-end of the application. Bootstrap, for instance, is a HTML, CSS and JS framework for the development of the design and functionalities of the application. For Bootstrap to function, JQuery is required. It is a JavaScript (JS) library which simplifies the usage of coding in JS (Bootstrap, 2019).

The client-side is the interactive part of the application which needs to be linked to the server-side in order to function. This can be done using Node.js which uses JavaScript to let the developer manage the server. Using Node.js, server data can be created, opened, read, deleted, modified etc. (W3Schools, 2019).

2.1.3 Data A sign that the traditional way of communicating using maps is changing is the increasing usage of crowdsourced data. As the usage of smartphones equipped with GPS receivers increases, the possibility to utilize their position during a crisis increases as well. This does not only, as highlighted in the article “Volunteered Geographic Information for Disaster Management with Application to Rapid Flood Damage Estimation”, yield a larger amount of data to use as a foundation for decision making when managing a crisis but also provides a possibility for the public to interact during a crisis (Poser and Dransch, 2010). Crowdsourced data can complete

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data that other sensors cannot collect and could be used in a similar fashion as the data that today is collected manually by the forces in the field1.

Fu et al. addresses the complexity of national meta data standards due to their need of describing all properties of geospatial resources. The complexity is explained as an obstacle for compiling with metadata standards and sharing information, where lack of time and funds are not uncommon reasons. Fu et al. emphasize that a solution to this is that the software developer provides processes that simplify, or even automate, the creation of standardized metadata (Fu and Sun, 2010).

Blåljuskollen is a checklist developed by Lantmäteriet and the Swedish Traffic Agency for Sweden’s municipalities. Its purpose is to ensure that the municipalities provide and update quality assured geographical data which is necessary for the emergency personnel to find the right directions when on call-out. Blåljuskollen does not directly relate to crisis communication, however, it handles an important part of this thesis, which is data management. Lantmäteriet mentions that the chain of collection and the provision of geographical information consists of each party's efforts and that the chain is not stronger than the weakest link. Thus, each party must understand the importance of their mission to ensure that the information is properly provided and thus enable the end product to function properly. To assure that the chain does not break, Lantmäteriet and the Swedish Traffic Agency has understood that a structured and standardized data management is important. Blåljuskollen instructs on which datasets that should be provided, how to structure the data and set up attribute values (e.g., spell correctly). Documentation of the data collection processes and responsibility distributions are especially emphasized, so that the update rate and quality have no risk of falling through the cracks (Lantmäteriet, 2019a).

2.1.4 Visualization in crisis communication That an information broadcast during a crisis is easy to comprehend is of great importance. Siricharoen Waralak wrote, in his study “Infographics: The New Communication Tools in Digital Age”, that the human brain easier understands relationships and patterns if it is visualised. Here infographics is defined as “interactive visual representations of data to amplify cognition” and exemplified as images and symbols. The aim with infographics is stated as to communicate information in a clear and effective way using graphical means. This applies to all types of data, but it is also stressed that maps are considered the best way of distributing geographically based information (Siricharoen, 2013). This theory is reinforced by the conclusions in S. Fitrianie and L.J.M. Rothkrantz’s article “Communication in Crisis Situations Using Icon Language”. This article focuses on communication and decision making during a crisis and the importance of simplifying the interpretation of the information received by a person. It is stated that subjectivity and ambiguity in the information would be reduced by communicating with maps

1 Ingvander, Susanne, Lägervik, Amanda, Ullén, Jeanna. Administrator in GIS and web editors at MSB. Interview. 2019-02-13

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and icons. It is advocated that this kind of communication would reduce of faulty decisions when managing the crisis (Fitrianie and Rothkrantz, 2005).

The advantages with visualisation, specifically using maps, is highlighted in yet another study where “Cartography and Visualisation” declares that visualised data is an important part of how knowledge is constructed in the human brain (Orford, Dorling and Harris, 2003). The focus of the article is on visualization of spatial data using maps and differentiates the usage of maps to visual thinking and communication. Here, visual thinking implies an analytical work with the visualised information in an interactive way, whereas communication is done using a static map. However, it is also stated that the interactivity might change with any further technical development (Orford, Dorling and Harris, 2003).

Although the previously mentioned studies state the fact that maps are suitable for communicating spatial information, there are still risks with communicating information visually instead of via text, sound etc. The risks, which are highlighted by M.J. Kraak and F. Ormeling in the book Cartography Visualization of Spatial Data, lie in the interpretation of the visualized information. There is no guarantee that the information is interpreted as the creator of the map intended it. However, since it is a well-known risk, it is prevented using cartography that defines standards for how information should be communicated (Kraak and Ormeling, 2013).

Despite the extensive research on the field of communication, in general, using maps and during a crisis, not all aspects have been covered. This due to that most of the research is categorised similarly to the article “Cartography and Visualisation”, but only focuses on the communication between the individuals or teams working with mitigating the crisis, either between authorities or from the public using crowdsourced data. This includes experts, decision-makers, forces in the field and volunteers. However, one salient stakeholder that is seldomly included in the studies is the public. This is mentioned as a dearth in the research in the article “The contribution of maps to the challenges of risk communication to the public” (Dransch, Rotzoll and Poser, 2010). In this article it is analysed how the communication from the authorities to the public could be simplified and improved using visualization of spatial data in an interactive format. Initially the article analyses the challenges with informing the public. Some of the main challenges mentioned are how the public perceive the information, how the information is presented and disseminated. Regarding the public's perception, normalcy bias is mentioned as a challenge. However, regarding the dissemination and presentation of information, the choice of target group, vividness and interactivity of the information is mentioned as the biggest challenges (Dransch, Rotzoll and Poser, 2010). Later in the article, the optimal dissemination and presentation of the information is discussed in the context of the public's perception. The article’s detailed analysis advocated the usage of spatial data, interactive platforms and GIS for enhanced understanding of information. Unfortunately, it focuses mainly on distributing information that could prevent a crisis.

As mentioned, an extensive amount of research has been made on the individual subjects that form the concept of communication during a crisis. This includes communication and

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management, spatial data, GIS and new techniques such as crowdsourcing. It also emphasizes the absence of research that compiles all those subjects with focus on communication between the authority and public during an ongoing crisis.

2.1.5 International examples of fire crisis communication In U.S.A, the state of California is heavily affected by wildfires due to their dry and hot climate. The Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also called Cal Fire, do not only protect the people and property of California, they also provide a web page service where citizens can access information on the ongoing situation of fires. The application is called California Statewide Fire Map and is embedded in the Cal Fire website. The application is map-based and interactive in the sense that the user can zoom in and out in the map and click on one of the objects to retrieve more information. The objects are in point shape and either as a red flame of fire (active fire), a black flame of fire (contained fire) or red flame of fire with a lightning (lightning complex). The additional information to the map feature is a name of the fire and a descriptive text explaining the situation of an object, e.g., close to what road, estimation of size, the date and time when the information was added as well as updated and how much of the fire that is contained.

Cal Fire also provide a mobile application called CAL FIRE Ready for Wildfire. This application contains four sections. One which serves to help people prepare for a wildfire with a checklist. Another which is an interactive fire map with features like the map on the website. A third which is a list of the displayed fires in the map and the fourth is providing fire news which is information directly from the Cal Fire twitter account (Cal Fire, 2019).

This kind of application is similar to the one provided by MSB today. The difference is the information content in the application, which is specifically focused on wildfires. This functionality could be implemented in the application Krisinformation.se as well. However, the application CAL FIRE Ready for Wildfire still has some shortcomings, which include using only point data instead of polygon and line data.

2.2 Situation analysis In Sweden today, there is a civil emergency planning, CEP, system which is based on the society’s ability to prevent and manage crises. The CEP of Sweden is based on three principles which lay the foundation for how a crisis should be managed for normal functions of the society to be kept during a crisis (Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, 2018a).

• Principle of responsibility – The authorities which has a responsibility normally also has a responsibility when there is a crisis. This also includes supporting and coordinating with other authorities.

• Principle of proximity – Sweden is divided into counties and on a lower level; municipalities with a large amount of autonomy. This autonomy entails a responsibility within CEP, thus, if there is an incident, the responsibility of management is associated to the municipality where it occurred. Support and assistance are provided from the appurtenant county.

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• Principle of similarity – When an incident happens that disturbs the functions of the society, the authorities are not to change their organization. Thus, they should work as they would under less extraordinary conditions.

This structure of crisis management is also applied on the responsibility of alerting and communicating with the public in times of crisis. Thus, each county shall, with its containing municipalities, communicate information concerning an incident or crisis (SFS 2015:1052, 2015).

During the summer of 2018 in Sweden, high temperatures and minimal rainfall resulted in many wildfires spreading throughout the country whereas Gävleborg County was one of the most affected counties. In an early stage of the summer, 9500 acres of forest fires were reported in Ljusdal municipality, situated in Gävleborg County (SOU 2019:7, 2019). To grasp the spread of 9500 acres of wildfire in Ljusdal, it can be compared to approximately 13 500 football fields burning at that time. The communication from Gävleborg County to the public during the fires of 2018 was with high frequency. Up to five information updates per day could be received through their website during the prevailed crisis of one month (Länsstyrelsen Gävleborg, 2018b). The information that could be accessed was via text and complementary maps uploaded as pdf files. Information such as the location of the fire, the upcoming weather forecast, which measures were taken by the different authorities and recommendations to the public could be accessed through the daily progress reports. Figure 1 shows a complementary map of the situation on the 18th of July. It is a “dead map”, i.e., non-interactive, nonetheless giving an overview of the situation in both text and visualization.

The maps that Gävleborg County provided were produced through helicopter flights over the burning area whereas maps were drawn by hand. With complement from the coastguard’s IR scans over the fire, maps could be digitalized and then uploaded on the website2.


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Figure 1. Progress report of wildfires in Gävleborg County, 2018-07-18 20:00.

Gävleborg County used the wildfires' spatial attributes in order to present the prevailed situation through maps. However, this was not the case for all counties and municipalities. Dalarna and Jämtland County, the adjacent counties of Gävleborg were also highly affected by the fires. They did not produce maps to communicate to the public. In their case, solely text was used in order to describe the situation.

Due to the many counties, as well as the municipalities within each county, there is a big stream of information that is published in times of a crisis. Since, due to the principles, every organization or authority close to the occurrence must communicate using their primary channels. That yields a flow of information in many different channels. Regularly, information is distributed using regional radio and TV. It is also published on the authorities' web pages, mainly the municipalities’ and counties’ web pages, which is also shared on their social media pages. Besides that, the commercial media publishes news about the happenings as well.

In order for the public to be able to receive relevant and accurate information in times of crisis, MSB has the Government's mandate to coordinate information from all different channels to the public (SFS 2008:1002, 2008).

During the wildfires of 2018 in Sweden, MSB worked as a coordinator of the information published by the different authorities to the public. Through press conferences with the media, they gave statements on the extent of the fires as well as progress reports on the measures taken

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to handle them. Since many people use the media as a source of information when in crisis, this was a vital part in communicating information about the prevailing situation.

2.2.1 Krisinformation.se MSB is also handling a communication platform called Krisinformation.se. It is available both as a website and as a mobile application. This is their main platform where they coordinate all relevant information to the public. However, Krisinformation is not a provider of information in the sense that they supply their own information. They are solely publishing confirmed information from responsible actors; authorities, organizations and companies/networks with responsibilities of essential services for the society. They also share the news published on the web page on social media such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in order to reach out to as many as possible3.

The content published on the website and the application of Krisinformation.se differs. The website’s content is more extensive in the sense that it contains a wider range of information in terms of pre, during as well as post crisis. Here, the public can access information about what threats there are against the society, how to prepare for them as well as historical events and how one can learn from them. During a crisis or events that affects the society, information, VMA’s and news from authorities are published on the front page of the website, see Figure 2. These posts are normally summaries of the main information for the reader to get a quick grasp on the most relevant information. If the reader wants more detailed information, the link to the original source is always attached4.

3 Ingvander, Susanne, Lägervik, Amanda, Ullén, Jeanna. Administrator in GIS and web editors at MSB. Interview. 2019-02-13 4 ibid.

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Figure 2. The front page of Krisinformation.se, 2019-05-16.

Through a list of affected counties and municipalities published on MSB’s website, the reader can access their websites to get more knowledge about the fires in that specific area (Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, 2018-08-24). There were no map features available directly on Krisinformation’s website. The only information presented as maps was from original sources such as SMHI (Swedish Metrological and Hydrological Institute) and Gävleborg County which could be accessed through their associated websites.

During an interview made with representatives from MSB, Susanne Ingvander, GIS administrator at MSB, emphasizes in an interview the difficulties with publishing progress reports as dynamic maps in times of a crisis such as the fires of 2018. Due to the dynamic nature of the crisis; areas that were burning in the morning could be put out in the evening and vice versa, creates hardships in ensuring the accuracy of the map. This factor can result in inaccurate information

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updates which in turn can lead to casualties. Due to this issue, maps are provided statically, “dead maps”, with time stamps which refers to how the situation was at that certain time5.

In comparison to the website, the application of Krisinformation is map based in its foundation. When the app is opened, the user is faced with posts of current warnings and information updates in form of a list. By switching to the map feature, these posts are visualized as points on a map. Since the map is interactive, the user can zoom in to its area of interest, click on a point and receive a short summary of the incident with a link to the source of the information. The user also has the possibility of showing events based on county regions. The application and its map are also interactive in the sense that there are settings to choose from in the menu. The user has the possibility of turning push-notices on for VMAs and the map feature can either be shown in hybrid, normal, satellite or terrain. For Android users the possibility of showing Google’s traffic information is also provided.

Figure 3. The different pages of the application provided by Krisinformation.se, 2019-06-05.

When it comes to the data sources, the app is providing four sources of information which you can toggle between on the interactive map to show their associated content. The sources used in the app are provided from the Swedish Transport Administration (STA), SMHI and Krisinformation as well as the mobile software’s own information of the location of hospitals and police departments. The information updates from the STA and SMHI are provided through APIs. The benefit is that the information is provided and published instantly when the STA or SMHI supply them. However, this system has its limitations. The format which the source creates its data establishes strict boundaries on how the data can be visualized in the app. If a point layer is provided, the data will only be able to be presented as points. Further and as one can see in


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the Figure 3 above, there is no distinction between the different sources in the symbology of points6.

During the wildfires of 2018, SOS Alarm provided information and data which was published in the application of Krisinformation. This is, however, not a service which is normally provided. The reason is that their data is highly identity protected, thus not able to be provided as an API. For SOS Alarm to be able to provide data, segments of the data must be changed to protect the identity of the persons it concerns. Consequently, the data was provided three times a day during the fire crisis as an Excel sheet whereas some columns of information was deleted7.

Jeanna Ullén, web editor at Krisinformation, states in the mentioned interview with MSB representatives, that the dream situation of data sources would be if all counties and municipalities would provide their data to Krisinformation. However, she emphasizes the importance of a standardized data format where they would provide the information and thereby realize the dream. Jeanna also mentions the police and fire department as possible future data sources8.

The symbology used when visualizing the spatial attribute of the events in the application is solely points. When placing the points on the map, the editorial staff of Krisinformation uses a hashtag function where they write the concerned region, e.g., Gävleborg County, as a hashtag which then automatically places the point in the centre of the region. If there is knowledge about the exact position of the event and it is of importance, the point can be placed manually but normally rapid publication of the information is prioritized. The current app does not support visualization in form of polylines or polygons. That is, if a fire is to be reported as an event, the point shape is used. This applies also when there has been a traffic accident between two traffic interchanges. In that case, the event is visualized as a point on the road segment with complementary text which describes the two traffic interchanges that are affected9. One can argue that this type of data management and presentation do not fully utilize the full potential of geospatial information.

2.3 Needs analysis Despite regulations and technical development specialised on quick and accurate information distribution, the public’s attitude regarding the communication structure today is not unambiguously positive. Studies of the Swedish public's attitude regarding the authority's communication during crisis shows that less than half of the people have a positive attitude towards how the information is distributed today. Peoples’ attitude differs based on the magnitude of the crisis and which authority that is responsible for the communication. People

6 Ingvander, Susanne, Lägervik, Amanda, Ullén, Jeanna. Administrator in GIS and web editors at MSB. Interview. 2019-02-13 7 ibid. 8 ibid. 9 ibid.

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are in general more pleased with the communication from the authorities if there is a national crisis rather than a local crisis, where only about one third is positive (Enkätfabriken, 2019).

There are two main reasons the communication is perceived as negative by the public. Firstly, there is a perception that the information is insufficient (Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, 2013). Secondly, that the information is posted by several different sources, through several different channels. This interferes with the possibility to create a broad picture of the situation and leads to a concern within the public, since important information could have been missed (Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, 2014).

The fact that people find the information confusing and request a web page and application that gathers the information shows that Krisinformation needs to be better advertised and that how information is provided on the pages needs to be improved. Today only one out of four people are familiar with Krisinformation.se and that only one out of one hundred have, if they were informed about an incident, gotten that information from Krisinformation.se (Enkätfabriken, 2019).

Despite this, 63% of people state that they would use a web page, online search engine or application to search for information during a crisis. This shows that the usage of a web page and application is suitable, but that the information presented is not enough. The kind of information that is requested is local information and information that could help prepare for an incident or act quickly after a VMA. The importance of information being objective, clear, easy to find and understand is highlighted (Enkätfabriken, 2019).

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3 Methodology This section firstly addresses the general strategy on how the thesis project was carried out. Secondly, an introduction to the case study is made, followed by definitions of technical terms that are recurring in the thesis. An elaborate description of the data collection method is then brought up. The datasets used in the development of the prototype are listed in Section 3.3 with a description on their source, format and what they were used for in the prototype. Further, the method of processing data is then explained. Additionally, the theory behind how the user interface was designed is clarified. Lastly, the procedure for visualizing data in the prototype is described.

3.1 Research strategy The thesis main goal is, as mentioned, to create a prototype for communication between authorities and the public during a national or local crisis caused by a wildfire. The application should contain all necessary information and present it so that the information is easily understood even during the stressful situation a wildfire could generate. To ensure this, a list of requirements was set as a base for the prototype. The requirements were based on an analysis of how the public wishes to be communicated with and how the communication is performed today together with what possibilities today’s technology might provide if used in a different way than previously. The requirements are set both for what information, and thereby data, that is needed, and the functionality of the user interface in the platform. Based on the requirements, the prototype is created.

Google Earth Engine (GEE) was the platform used to develop the prototype. With its already implemented map interface, the need of developing a platform from scratch could be avoided. Also, it has an extensive catalogue of datasets which can be implemented using GEE’s existing analysis algorithms. Further, since it is linked to Google's other services, such as Google Fusion Table, Google Cloud Storage and Google Sheets, data can easily be structured and incorporated into the platform. Consequently, Google Earth Engine was considered an appropriate development platform for the prototype.

In an early stage of the development process of the prototype, the frame for the user interface is created and the data collected. The main types of data for the prototype will be dynamic data and static data, i.e., data that changes over time and data that seldomly or never change, see Section 3.3. Lastly the prototype will be tested, with focus on functionality and content. See Figure 4 for the schematic description of the research strategy.

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Figure 4. Schematic description of the research strategy for the thesis.

3.2 Case study Since the wildfires of 2018 are close in time when writing this thesis and there is documentation on how the general public perceived the authorities’ communication of crisis information, it is of relevance to apply the wildfires of 2018 as a case study for this thesis. Hence, the prototype of the communication platform will be developed for scenarios of national wildfires in Sweden. This means that the data collection and presentation, the design of the interface and the functions within the prototype are developed to satisfy the communication of information from the authorities to the public when in times of a crisis caused by wildfire.

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3.3 Definitions Crisis can be defined on a broad spectrum whereas it differs depending on the nature of the situation. The Handbook of Crisis Communication concludes that there is not a universally accepted definition of crisis, however, the conceptual similarities such as unexpected, negative and overwhelming permeate them all. The Handbook of Crisis Communication mainly treats the definition of crisis in an organizational perspective. However, they highlight the importance of not limiting crisis to only have impact on organizations, instead the harm (physical, financial or psychological) on stakeholders should be rated as the most significant negative outcome of a crisis. This angle of the definition is in line with the focus of this study; to develop an aid for the stakeholders, i.e., the public, to be able to manage a crisis and stay out of harm. To conclude, in this study, a crisis is defined as a serious, unexpected and overwhelming event which can lead to direct or indirect negative outcomes on the stakeholders, i.e., the general public (Coombs and Holladay, 2010).

Anaconda is a program that is used to connect a python environment to GEE, using the Earth Engine API. This is needed to ingest data provided in API form.

API, Application Programming Interface, is the interface which lets software applications communicate with each other. By using an API request to a data server, a response containing the requested data can be ingested in an application.

Crisis communication is defined in The Handbook of Crisis Communication as the collection and processing of information along with the creation and dissemination of crisis messages to people outside of the crisis management team. As clarification, since the word communication can be interpreted as bidirectional, crisis communication is referred in this study as the unidirectional communication from authorities to the public (Coombs and Holladay, 2010).

Crontab is a program that enables a user to schedule runs of scripts or commands on a computer based on the Unix operating system, i.e., Linux or Mac. It uses crons, or daemons, that only needs to be set up once. After that it will be dormant until it is scheduled to run. It does not consider day saving time and will not run if the computer or server is turned off (Wallen, 2011).

Forest fires are uncontrolled fires in forests and other land. It is mainly caused by negligence when lighting fires or by the strike of lightning (Nationalencyklopedin, 2019).

Fusion table is a web application hosted by Google, used to gather, share and visualize data tables. It is in the prototype created in this thesis used to gather manually created data from municipalities, counties and other authorities to make the information distribution standardized.

Google Cloud Storage (GCS) is a cloud server solution provided by Google. It provides easy storage and distribution to other Google products and can be handled using script that bases on googles own version of java script (Google, 2019).

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Google Earth Engine (GEE) is providing the tools and satellite data to make scientific analyses of large geospatial datasets and visualising them in an application. The applications are programmed using a version of the programming language Java, with Googles own predefined functions. Any data not included in the platform can be added as an asset or by using Fusion Tables and Sheets (Gorelick et al., 2017).

Python is used as the programming language for handling the data requested by API. Due to it being, using Anaconda, compatible with the Google environment. Python version 2.7 is used due to achieve the best combability.

3.4 Choice of methods for data collection

3.4.1 Static data The static data is rarely modified and will work as base features for the map interface. Emergency rooms, evacuation shelters and county borders are examples of static data. These datasets are created or collected and implemented beforehand with the prototype.

3.4.2 Dynamic data Dynamic data, i.e., data that is rapidly changing, is yet to be used for crisis communication in an interactive platform. This is mainly due to the frequency of which the occurrence changes rarely being the same as the frequency of which the information could be updated. This yields a risk of presenting inaccurate information10. In conclusion, today’s way of presenting the situation of a fire event is done by using dead maps with a time stamp for that specific time. However, with meticulous and structured collection of the manually created data together with usage of automated data flows, the dynamic data can be presented accurately in the prototype.

3.4.2.1 Data from online sources The dynamic data that was collected online is weather warnings from SMHI, traffic warnings from the STA and VMA from MSB. This was achieved using a Python script that collects, converts and uploads the data. It was collected from each publisher's respective database using an API request. In the API request, only the necessary information was filtered out and collected. The response to the API request was then converted into a suitable file format for geographical data, in this case the Shapefile format, since it is compatible with GEE’s asset upload unlike the API request. The data was then uploaded to an online data storage, GCS, from where it was ingested into GEE as an asset. The function to upload data to GCS and ingest data into GEE from a local python script was enabled by connecting a python environment to the GEE API. The connection enabled the usage of all functions and tools that GEE provides in the online code editor in a local python script together with the possibility to upload data from a computer or server to the GEE platform, via GCS. The connection was done using Anaconda.


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To make sure that the data in the prototype is frequently updated, so that the user can get near real time information, the script must be run frequently. This was automated to run hourly on the computer that the script was stored on. The automatization is created using Crontab, with the specific cron that, as mentioned, schedules a run of a specific command or script and executes it on set schedule.

3.4.2.2 Coordinate data from online authorities Today, through the principle of responsibility, each authority must provide data and information concerning an event. This is commonly done locally, for instance within a municipality or county. Thus, relevant data exists but is distributed on different websites and platforms. Beyond that, different data structures are common. In order to coordinate the data from the different authorities, a standardized data structure is vital for the ingestion of data into the prototype to work properly. By using Google Fusion Tables with predetermined structures, several representatives can use the same Fusion Table to upload their specific information, without having to collaborate with each other to determine what information should be included. Due to the possibility that any representative from the authority can manage and create spatial data on another platform, store it as a KML file and directly upload it into an existing Fusion Table. When the data is added to the Fusion Table it is directly updated in the prototype thanks to the import of the data using a link request. In the prototype, several event related data sources are compiled in fusion tables, see Specification of data and Figure 5, Figure 6 and Figure 7. Here a common structure including dates and times for timestamps, area identification IDs, descriptions and geometries are included as a standard in the structure.

Figure 5. The compiled fictive information regarding the evacuated areas presented in the prototype.

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Figure 6. The compiled fictive information regarding the estimated fire areas presented in the prototype.

Figure 7. The compiled fictive information regarding the suspended lakes presented in the prototype.

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An example of non-event related information that would benefit of this kind of coordination is fire ban information. Due to them being determined by the municipalities and as of today only issued on each municipality's web page. Further, since it is also very useful for information connected to a crisis such as a forest fire, it is compiled in a fusion table for the usage in the prototype, see Figure 8.

Figure 8. Parts of the fire ban data compiled in a fusion table used in the prototype.

3.4.2.3 Crowdsource data from the public Another functionality in the prototype that has yet to be fully provided in today’s crisis management, is the opportunity for the public to help each other. During the crisis of 2018 Gävleborg county compiled contact information to people that could provide evacuation accommodation for farm animals but only locally on the web page (Länsstyrelsen Gävleborg, 2018a). This is in the prototype further developed to a crowdsource function for providing evacuation accommodation. The municipality is responsible for providing accommodations for people that needs to evacuate. The accommodations are often located in larger facilities such as schools etc. The crowd source functionality would provide a possibility for people to evacuate together with their pets or farm animals or for evacuation of only farm animals. The functionality is enabled by the usage of the Google platform, since all Google’s products can be connected. The crowdsourced data is collected using a Google Form. There, the user enters the location for

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and information about the accommodation together with their contact information. The answers collected in the form is compiled in a Google Spreadsheet which in turn is connected to a Google Fusion Table. The connection is created in G Suite Developer Hub, i.e., Googles developer platform, using a pre-existing script provided by Lee Clontz on the community GitHub (Clontz, 2014) and the built-in trigger functions. This yields that every time a user submits the form, the information is stored in the Google Spreadsheet, the location is geocoded into coordinates, the Google Fusion Table is updated, and the information is directly ingested into the prototype using a link request.

3.5 Specification of data Available evacuation accommodation

Source: Crowdsourced using Google Forms. Format: Point data. Refresh rate: Dynamic, updated when a new entry is made. Insertion to the prototype: Fusion table. Function in the application: Provide location and information about evacuation accommodation. Attributes: Through the Google Form, the user enters the needed information to establish an evacuation accommodation for those in need. Attributes such as the location of the accommodation, the time span when the accommodation is available, how many people, pets and farm animals there are room for as well as the user’s contact information, name and telephone number are included.

Counties

Source: Lantmäteriet (Lantmäteriet, 2019b) Format: Polygon data. Refresh rate: Static. Insertion to the prototype: Manually. Function in the application: Visualize the Swedish counties to enable choosing areas to get information within. Attributes: The name of the counties in Sweden.

Emergency rooms Source: Manually created based on Vårdguiden (Vårdguiden, 2019). Format: Point data. Refresh rate: Static. Insertion to the prototype: Fusion table. Function in the application: Provide location and information about the emergency rooms. Attributes: The name of the emergency room, the associated telephone number and a link to the emergency room’s website.

Estimated fire area

Source: Authority coordinator. Format: Polygon data. Refresh rate: Dynamic, manually updated when changed. Insertion to the prototype: Fusion table. Function in the application: Visualize location and dimension of the fire.

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Attributes: Name of the affected area which works as an ID, description of what type of fire there is and other important information, the area of the fire as well as the time for when the dataset was first uploaded and last updated.

Evacuated areas

Source: Authority coordinator Format: Polygon data. Refresh rate: Dynamic. Insertion to the prototype: Fusion table. Function in the application: Visualizes areas that are evacuated. Attributes: The name of the evacuated area which could be a nearby town or other landmark to work as an ID, the date when the evacuation was done and the date when it is safe to return to the area.

Fire ban

Source: The Swedish municipalities Format: Polygon data Refresh rate: Dynamic, manually updated when changed Insertion to the prototype: Fusion table Function in the application: Visualize which counties where it is prohibited to start an open fire outdoors Attributes: Name of the concerned municipality, a description of the fire ban and the time for when the fire ban was last updated.

General information

Source: SOS Alarm (SOS Alarm, 2019a; SOS Alarm, 2019b), Vårdguiden (Vildbird, 2018), Krisinformation.se (Engström and Looström, 2014; Krisinformation.se, 2018a), SVT, MSB (Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, 2019), the Swedish Red Cross society (Röda korset, 2019). Format: Text and links Refresh rate: Static Insertion to the prototype: Manually Function in the application: Inform the user of ways to prepare for and handle a crisis.

Municipalities Source: Lantmäteriet (Lantmäteriet, 2019b). Format: Polygon data. Refresh rate: Static. Insertion to the prototype: Manually Function in the application: Visualize the Swedish municipalities to facilitate understanding of the map. Attributes: The name of the municipality.

National and local traffic warnings

Source: The Swedish Traffic Agency (Trafikverket, 2019). Format: Point data. Refresh rate: Dynamic, updated every hour. Insertion to the prototype: Automatically using script on server. Function in the application: Visualize national and local occurrences affecting the traffic.

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Attributes: Location which works as an ID, the announcement that informs if there, for example, has been an accident or if the road is closed, severity of the event, explanation of the event and its impact, the time when the announcement was last updated as well as the link to the Swedish Traffic Agency’s website.

National and local weather warnings

Source: SMHI (SMHI, 2019). Format: Polygon data. Refresh rate: Dynamic, updated every hour. Insertion to the prototype: Automatically using script on server. Function in the application: Visualize national and local weather warnings. Attributes: The districts that SMHI has divided the country and surrounding oceans into, the announcement that provides the information about the weather warning, the time when the announcement was last updated as well as the link to the SMHI’s website.

Possible future evacuation areas – Zone 1 and Zone 2

Source: Computed in the prototype Format: Polygon data Refresh rate: Dynamic Insertion to the prototype: Included in the platform Function in the application: Prepare people for a possible evacuation prior to the occurrence of an evacuation

Shelters

Source: MSB (Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, 2012). Format: Point data Refresh rate: Static Insertion to the prototype: Manually Function in the application: Provide information about shelter rooms close to the users chosen location Attributes: The address where the shelter is located, which works as an ID, in which city the shelter is located, how many people the shelter holds and link to MSBs webpage that provides more information about the shelters.

Suspended lakes

Source: Authority coordinator. Format: Polygon data. Refresh rate: Dynamic, manually updated when changed. Insertion to the prototype: Fusion table. Function in the application: Visualize which lakes that are suspended for collection of water for mitigating the fire Attributes: Name of the affected lake which works as an ID, description of the effect on the lake, the time for when the dataset was first uploaded and last updated.

VMA - Important Announcement to the Public Source: Krisinformation.se (Krisinformation.se, 2018b). Format: Point data Refresh rate: Dynamic, updated every hour Insertion to the prototype: Automatically using script on server

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Function in the application: Visualize larger national and local occurrences sent out by Krisinformation.se Attributes: The title of the announcement which works as an ID, a more descriptive text about the announcement, the time of when the announcement was last updated and a link to Krisinformation.se

3.6 Data processing

3.6.1 Generating Possible future evacuation areas Most of the information presented in the prototype is based on previously existing data, however some is generated in the prototype, e.g., Possible future evacuation areas. Due to hazards of fires and their associated smoke development, emergency services on site establish evacuation areas around the ongoing fires for the public to be in a safe distance. Due to the dynamic nature of fires, where factors such as wind and soil type affect the fire’s spread, there is not a standardized distance when establishing these evacuation areas. Instead, these evacuation areas are based on existing boundary lines in the terrain such as roads or lakes. In comparison, when there is a chemical fire, more standardized measures are taken. In such cases, an evacuation area of 50 meters is established in less serious situations and an evacuation area of 300 meters in more serious situations11. Since no current model for evacuation zones surrounding wildfires exist, the evacuation zone distances used in the case of a chemical fire is used to visualize a possible evacuation zone in the prototype.

3.7 User interface design For the authorities to communicate and for the public to obtain relevant crisis information in an effective way, where no important information is lost, an elaborate graphical user interface (GUI) is important throughout the whole design of the prototype. There are three principles which can streamline the communication in a GUI. These have all been considered during the development of the prototype (Wilbert O., 2007).

Organize – According to Galitz, consistency throughout the application facilitates for the user to use the application. In contrast, casual differences cause the user to work harder when using the application. Further, the GUI design should follow cultural conventions which coincides with the real world, e.g., the symbology is logical to what it represents in the real world. Galitz claims that a standardized layout whereas related elements are grouped together achieves organization of the screen layout (Wilbert O., 2007).

Economize – Galitz mentions to economize the design, i.e., doing the most with the least, and illuminates the importance of simplicity to only using the elements that are of importance to the context. Clarity between components and emphasis of the most important elements are techniques to achieve economy, Galitz continues (Wilbert O., 2007).

11 Törling, Tommy. Assistant Chief Fire Officer at Gästrike Fire and Rescue Service. E-mail. 2019-04-12

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Communicate – For efficient communication of complex information in the UI, Galitz emphasises the use of multiple views such as links and metadata. Also, colour is mentioned as a powerful tool for communication and specific approaches are mentioned: Emphasize important information, portray natural objects realistically and use colours to group related elements (Wilbert O., 2007).

3.8 Visualization of data As witnessed during the fires of 2018 in Sweden, authorities used static maps to communicate information about the ongoing fire situation (Länsstyrelsen Gävleborg, 2018b). However, D. Dransch emphasizes in her article how the communication from the authorities to the public can be improved using an interactive format (Dransch, Rotzoll and Poser, 2010). That being said, the prototype of this communication platform is intended to be as interactive as possible in order to maximize the user's receptiveness and understanding of the information provided.

Common for the prototype’s two main sections are their general structure and them being map-based. With one main panel presenting the datasets and their associated attributes, thus working as a legend, the map interface intends to be easily navigated and perspicuous for the user. Individual checkboxes for each dataset and drop-down menus to view their attributes lets the user be interactive with the map and toggle which data to be visualized, consequently customizing to their personal needs and preferences to achieve the optimal user experience.

Data referred to a specific location was visualized as a point. Polygons were used to visualize data covering an area. The same symbol for the point as well as colour for the polygon was used in the legend. GEE has a catalogue of basic symbols which was used to visualize the point data in the map. For the polygon data, a colour was chosen to logically represent the dataset, e.g., blue for suspended lakes. With a chosen colour for the outline of the polygon and the same colour with an opacity of 70% for the fill colour, the polygon data can easily be distinguished in the map and at the same time not lose the content of the base map (Toomanian, Harrie and Olsson, 2012). The basic symbology provided in the GEE platform includes all colours and 11 different icons for points. This enables to visually differ between countless of different data. However, MSB has together with Lantmäteriet and the Swedish defence created some directions regarding the symbology on web maps, applicable for crisis communication. The unique symbols that were recommended was not used in the prototype but general recommendations regarding selections of colour was implemented (Lantmäteriet, Försvarsmakten and Myndigheten för samhällsskydd och beredskap, 2016).

Some crisis information is not spatially connected, however at least as important for the understanding of how to handle and prepare for a crisis. Therefore, additional, non-spatial data was included in the prototype and presented in the panels. This to complement and reinforce the comprehension of the visualized data in the map interface.

3.8.1 Location-based data The location-based map interface is designed for the users to get quick and clear access of relevant and updated crisis information that concerns their proximity. By clicking in the map,

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the user can retrieve authority announcements, wildfire related information and general information on where evacuation shelters and emergency rooms are located close to the specified location.

With the buffer function, spatial data within a specified distance to the chosen location is displayed in the map. The distance for the buffer varies depending on the data. For the dataset of the shelters, 400 meters is applied to the buffer. This is the maximum distance that people should be able to seek out the shelter before an attack comes (SOU 1950:13, 1950). For the remaining datasets that are displayed in the location-based section, 10.000 m is applied, see Table 1. This is a distance which entails subjectivity due to lack of prior research on the subject.

Table 1. Data used in the location-based information section of the prototype.

Data Buffer distance (m) Announcements

VMA 10 000 Traffic warnings 10 000

General information Emergency rooms 10 000 Shelters 400

Event related information Estimated fire area 10 000 Suspended lakes 10 000 Evacuated areas 10 000 Possible future evacuation areas zone 1 & 2 10 000

3.8.2 Area-based data The area-based map interface is designed to give the users an overview of the ongoing situation for a chosen county. By clicking on a county, data which is within the demarcating administration lines will be displayed. With the purpose of providing information that gives the users support in preparation for a crisis and an overall understanding of the ongoing situation, the data content of the area-based interface differs from the location-based interface to some extent, see Table 2.

Initially and before choosing a county, national VMA’s, weather and traffic warnings are presented. Thereafter, specific data for the chosen county is displayed. With the purpose of giving general information, the area-based interface also contains information on how to prepare for returning home to a fire-affected area.

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Table 2. Data used in the area-based information section of the prototype.

Data National announcements

VMA Traffic warnings Weather warnings

County announcements VMA Traffic warnings Weather warnings

Event related information Estimated fire areas Fire bans Suspended lakes Evacuated areas Available evacuation accommodations Possible future evacuation areas zone 1 & 2

General information Emergency rooms

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4 Results This thesis resulted in a prototype which collects, compiles, and visualizes crisis data from all parties involved in a crisis situation caused by a wildfire. This to enable the public to manage and plan for a crisis. Hence, the prototype has the suiting name CMAP – Crisis Management and Planning.

4.1 Initial information The initial page of the prototype briefly explains the content and purpose of the application and provides crucial information, see Figure 9. The information is automatically launched in conjunction with the launch of the prototype but will not be displayed during further usage of the prototype.

The information displayed is thought to function as an instruction on which authority to contact in case of a direct emergency, for questions regarding non acute medical issues or major occurrences or crises and lastly, how to prepare for situations associated with crises.

Figure 9. The initial page of the prototype, 2019-05-13 11:00.

4.2 Main menu The main menu is the foundation in the usage of the prototype. It is straightforward and provides the possibility to launch each of the main sections of the prototype and is returned to when exiting each section, see Figure 10.

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Figure 10. The prototype’s main menu 2019-05-13 11:00.

4.3 Map based sections Most of the data in the map-based sections has associated attributes which contains relevant information for the description of the surrounding situation. These attributes are presented in a panel, working as a legend, on the map interface where the user has the possibility to toggle between showing and hiding the datasets in the map. Using GEEs built-in tools, the items in the dataset can be selected in a drop-down selector where the associated attributes of the data are then presented. In connection to each dataset in the panel, a symbol, for point data, or a colour box, for polygon data, is representing how the data is visualized in the map.

The information is divided using the same categories for both sections: Announcements, Event related information and General information. This to create consecution throughout the prototype and simplify the user interface. Before initiating the functionality of either location-based or area-based interface, the information that the user will be presented with is shown in a faded style in the panel. This so that the user instantly can draw a conclusion if the information fulfils the need or if another part of the application is more suitable. Lastly, all dynamic data, mentioned in Section 3.5, is provided with unique time stamps for when the data was either uploaded, updated or for what time interval it is valid.

4.3.1 Location-based information The location-based information is focused on providing critical information needed if in an emergency. The functionality is focused on facilitating decision making for the user. This by presenting information valid in vicinity to a user defined location and excluding all information

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that is redundant in the situation. All information is presented visually in the map with a short informative text in the panel.

The first display of the location-based functionality provides no information; however, the user is introduced to how to initiate the location-based information. Website for authorities and important parties in crisis situations are linked for easy access.

Figure 11. The location-based information section of the prototype 2019-05-13 11:00.

When the user marks their desired position in the map, data in vicinity to the chosen position is visualized in the map and their legend properties are presented in the panel. Each layer is logically grouped under one of three categories below. Using the drop-down menus for the different layers, the user can access each object’s attributes, see Figure 12.

• Announcements contains authority announcements from the Swedish Traffic Agency and Krisinformation.

• Event related information contains information related to a wildfire event. This contains information about the area that is currently burning, any lakes that are suspended due to water collection for mitigating the fire using aircrafts, any evacuated areas and areas that might have to evacuate in a near future.

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• General information contains information about all emergency rooms and shelters in the specific area. Also, the chosen location is presented.

Figure 12. Showing the drop-down selector and how STA announcements are presented, 2019-05-13 11:00.

The location chosen in Figure 12 and Figure 13 is, at the moment, not affected by any wildfire. This can be seen in Figure 13, where no event-related information is visualized in the map. This also means that there is no further information to be presented either, and this is made clear by the drop-down menus and information buttons stating that there is no event within 10 kilometres.

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Figure 13. The visualization if no event is in vicinity to the chosen location, 2019-05-13 11:00.

Depending on the chosen location, the description of the situation, in the top of the panel, varies. For instance, and as seen in Figure 14, if the location is situated in proximity to an estimated fire area and in a Possible future evacuation zones, information about the closest shelter and emergency room will appear. This text has the purpose of informing the user of its most crucial information when in possible danger. If the chosen location is within the estimated fire area, a certain information text is presented in the top of the panel to make the user aware of its situation, see Figure 15.

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Figure 14. Information presented when chosen location is in vicinity to an estimated fire, 2019-05-13 11.00.

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Figure 15. Information presented when chosen location is within estimated fire area 2019-05-13 11:00.

For other situations that do not involve any potential danger, the information in the top of the panel has a more preparational purpose, see Figure 16.

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Figure 16. Information presented when chosen location is within safe distance to a fire, 2019-05-13 11:00.

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4.3.2 Area-based information The area-based information is mainly focused on providing an overview of the national or local situation. But also, to provide information that can help the user prepare for a crisis before it reaches the location the user is in or to stay informed about other areas in the country. A possible area of use is to stay informed about any occurrences close to a seasonal accommodation that is more rarely visited. In Figure 17 the initial interface is presented.

Figure 17. The initial area-based information section of the prototype, showing the national information, 2019-05-13 11:00.

The initial interface provides information about major events occurring nationally. Here, important announcements to the public, major traffic accidents and SMHI’s weather warnings are visually presented in the map. In the panel, more detailed information about the mentioned events are presented as seen in Figure 18. Lastly, instructions on how to obtain area-based information is presented. Since all data is dynamic, they have an individual timestamp of when it was issued and when it was last updated. If there is no current event, nothing can be chosen

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in the drop-down menu, as for the choice VMA – Important announcement to the public, which lacks information and visualization.

Figure 18. Information displayed about two current events, 2019-05-13 11.00.

As informed in the panel, more detailed information will be presented if the user marks an area in the map. The areas are based on the county boundaries, similar to today's common practice in crisis communication. The base interface, without any displayed data, is presented in Figure 19.

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Figure 19. The area-based information section for Stockholm county, without any information visualized in the map, 2019-05-13 11.00.

When a county is chosen, all available information is visualized in the map, see Figure 20. The panel’s regular categories Announcements, Event related information and General information are now accompanied by the category Post event information.

• Announcements contains the same information as the initial panel, with the difference that it is referred to the announcements within the county.

• Event related information contains all information that is related to a wildfire event. This contains information about the area that is currently burning, any lakes that are suspended due to water collection for mitigating the fire using aircrafts, any evacuated areas, available evacuation accommodations and areas that might have to evacuate in a near future.

• General information contains information about all emergency rooms within the county and the municipalities that currently has a fire ban.

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• Post event information contains information that might be needed after a crisis has passed. Here presenting information on how to prepare for returning home after being evacuated from one's home.

Figure 20. The area-based information section for Stockholm county, with all information displayed in the map, 2019-05-13 11:00.

In the Figure 21 and Figure 22, a fictive forest fire in Nacka, Stockholm county, is displayed to present the Event related information more in detail. It is not uncommon that larger wildfires close to inhabited areas will generate both evacuated areas and suspended lakes for water collection. This to make sure that no person is injured and that the fire can be put out as fast as possible.

As seen in Figure 21, the estimated fire area is in Nacka, and an available evacuation accommodation is located in Nysätra.

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Figure 21. The map showing the fire, suspended lake, evacuated area, possible evacuation zones and an available evacuation accommodation, 2019-05-13 11.00.

In Figure 22, the detailed information regarding the fictive fire is displayed. Based on the visualized data in the map and the detailed information in the panel, the following description of the current situation is provided:

There is an ongoing fire in the Nacka nature preserve, close to the residential area Hästhagen. The area affected by the fire is approximately 51 ha in size and is being extinguished. The last time the fire event was updated was 2019-05-10 at 15:30 and could have changed since then. Due to the fire, Källtorpssjön is suspended and will continue to be so until it is no longer shown in the map or the information says otherwise. A smaller area within Hästhagen is evacuated since 2019-05-06 and is yet to return to their homes. A possible evacuation accommodation for any evacuees to evacuate to could be reached by the contact information in the panel. The accommodation is available until 2019-05-31 and holds 10 people but no pets or farm animals are allowed.

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Figure 22. The map showing the fictive fire, suspended lake and evacuated area, 2019-05-13 11.00.

However, if other data layers are presented in the map, as in Figure 23, an informative description of a possible future situation is provided:

The current fire in the Nacka nature preserve could lead to residents within Hästhagen and along the roads “Kranglans väg” and “Östervägen” having to evacuate. If an evacuation would occur, it would be announced on the local radio, accommodation will be provided by the municipality but could also be found using Available evacuation accommodation. Residents located within 50 meters from the fire could prepare by packing the items mentioned in the information, while residents within 300 meters from the fire should stay informed using the local radio.

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Figure 23. The map showing the fictive fire and the Possible future evacuation zones, 2019-05-13 11.00.

Besides the information about the current and possible future situations, other general information is of importance as well. This information shows which municipalities that has a current fire ban and where the county's emergency rooms are located. As seen in Figure 24, all municipalities within the county has a current fire ban that dissuades open fires.

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Figure 24. The general information in the Stockholm county, valid 2019-05-13 11.00.

Finally, the area-based section of the prototype provides information that is useful after the crisis has passed. Here including information on how to know that it is safe to return home and how to prepare for what might face a person when returning, as seen in Figure 25.

Figure 25. Post event information, 2019-05-13 11:00.

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4.4 Help menu Based on the experiences from the forest fires in Ljusdal 2018, the public is proved to be prone to help both authorities and each other during a crisis (Länsstyrelsen Gävleborg, 2018a; Andersson, 2018). Therefore, the information on how to contribute in the most suitable way is gathered as a section in the prototype, see Figure 26.

Previously the Red Cross has been responsible to coordinate volunteers during crises and handles applications for volunteer work in other situations as well. The application system is well-functioning and provided as an online web application and by phone. The prototype therefore provides contact information and a redirection to the application web page.

Figure 26. The help menu of the prototype, 2019-05-13 11:00.

Besides the possibility to help the authorities by contributing to the mitigation of the fire, the public is provided with information on how to help each other. The most acute help needed during a crisis that leads to evacuation of people from their homes is to find places for accommodation. Each municipality is responsible for providing a secure site for accommodating evacuated people. However, pets and farm animals are not included in the provided evacuation accommodation (Landenmark, Sjöholm and Bäckbring, 2018). Therefore, the automatically updated and filtered form was set up and referred to in the prototype, see Figure 27.

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Figure 27. The form for providing evacuation accommodation.

In the form the user can provide information about the accommodation, including the address of the location, the time period for which is available, the number of people, smaller pets and farm animals that can be accommodated and the contact information to the provider. This to give the possibility to both room people together with their pets, and to provide accommodation for larger animals that otherwise can be hard to evacuate.

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5 Discussion In order to develop a common crisis communication platform, four basic areas have been recognized. The first concerns which data to include, its structure and implementation, the second discusses processing of data, the third focuses on user interface and visualization of data while the fourth addresses the choice of software when developing a communication platform. Lastly, in Section 0, flaws in the execution of the developed prototype are discussed.

5.1 Data The basic prerequisite for a coordinated communication platform is the handling of data. For the data to be accurately ingested into the platform, thus visualizing the spatial data in the map and presenting its attributes correctly, a standardized structure of data management is crucial. The same mindset of data management has been successfully implemented in practice by Lantmäteriet and the Swedish Traffic Agency via the checklist Blåljuskollen. The initiative shows that it is possible to introduce municipalities to a standardized data management. However, this is not the case for crisis communication. Today, each county has its own responsibility to provide crisis data, which means that the data may differ depending on county, their own workflow and prerequisites regarding time and funds. Further, other authorities also provide their own crisis data. This complicates the process of compiling all data in a common platform. However, and in line with Blåljuskollen and Fu et al. mentioned in Section 2.1.3, by setting up a standardized structure for data management the data can easily be ingested in the platform. Fusion Tables have proved to be an effective tool for the standardization where the predetermined attribute columns provide the guidelines needed for the GIS coordinator at the authority to upload the correct format of data and attributes.

The need of standardized data structure applies especially for API data since it can only be requested, collected and visualized, not managed or changed in any way if it is directly ingested in the platform. In the prototype, the API data is somewhat modified since the python script that collects it also modifies it into a shapefile. The modification includes merging two sources of information, for the SMHI data, into one functioning dataset, and general filtering to collect only the data of interest. The conversion is needed mainly since GEE cannot handle an API call for any other data than the one stored as an asset or in a Fusion Table. The automated update of the data that is currently functioning on a regular computer would work more seamlessly if created on a regular or online server. The usage of crontab for creating the automated update is suitable for usage on any Unix based server, but the usage would most likely be more seamlessly working if instead included in the Google platform.

As for data management, a structured workflow is also important when creating a crowdsource feature. By creating a form with strict input fields, one can guide the user to enter information in the correct format. Further, automatic handling of input data and intake in the platform provides more efficient data management, which can otherwise be a great time load. A concern with crowdsource data is that there is a risk that the data provided by the public is inaccurate. In the prototype, the data provided by the public is not verified. The reason for this is that the

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data is not base for any analysis or decision making and that it only being a supplement to the evacuation accommodations already provided by the municipality.

Susanne Ingvander mentions in an interview how handling of dynamic data yields a risk of presenting inaccurate information due to lack of timestamps. Consequently, dynamic data is not handled today, and solely static data for a fire event is presented through “dead maps”. However, one can argue that by providing a data management structure where an update time can be filled in standardized, provides the opportunity to handle dynamic data. Further, using dynamic data enables a unique timestamp for each dataset. Thus, one can get more frequent updated data by just updating a single layer. However, this assumes that the user can draw conclusions about the data since a complete description with an overall time stamp for the situation does not exist.

Another risk with collecting and compiling all data in a prototype to present to the public is the shifting of responsibility. If Krisinformation.se, as today, only directs to information from other sources, the responsibility for the information being correct and updated is on the parties that provides the information. However, if Krisinformation.se collects all the data and publishes it, the responsibility is shifted to Krisinformation.se. Thys means that any technical issues such as updates and streams of data is faulty, Krisinformation.se would be responsible.

5.2 Data processing Other dynamic data that is not collected online or using a Fusion Table but instead computed directly in the prototype is the forecasts of future evacuation zones. These areas are computed based on the geometries of the current fire areas and a simple model for chemical fires, mentioned in Section 3.6. However, as mentioned, this is not suited for a wildfire which bases evacuation areas on natural boundary lines, analyses of the soil type and current wind force and direction. The model for this type of evacuation zone could possibly be created, but it is not the purpose of this thesis. It is rather to draw attention to the need of visualizing such information to the public and how this could be done. In line with the aim for this thesis, to assure an effective crisis communication to the public, it is an important source of information that could enable a possibility to prepare for a Possible future evacuation caused by the current event.

Besides the forecasts of Possible future evacuation zones, a subjective model is used for the location-based information as well. Since all information visualized in the map is filtered based on a set distance from the selected location. Some of the datasets, such as shelters, do have guidelines regarding how far every person should have to their closest shelter. In that case, the guideline is used to filter the data in the prototype. However, if no such guideline exists, a subjective distance of 10 000 meters is used to filter the data. A specified distance or another type of model could be created for each of the datasets, but it is, as for the Possible future evacuation zones, not the purpose of this thesis.

5.3 User interface design and visualization In line with the GUI principle mentioned in Section 3.7, area data is visualized using polygons in the prototype to portray natural objects realistically. In contrast to the prior communication platform Krisinformation which solely uses points, this way of visualization uses the full potential

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of GIS. When solely visualizing points for all data, complications arise. For an example, when a national VMA is issued, it is today visualized as a centroid point for Sweden. Consequently, that point has no spatial relationship to all counties where the announcement is relevant. This complicates the process of including the information to the associated counties’ attributes. By using polygons, this implication can be avoided.

In the prototype, polyline data is not used, thus, one could therefore argue that the full potential of GIS is not used. Polyline data, such as the road network, exists, however, it was not accurate enough and could not be useful for the prototype’s functions. Further, no authority is yet to create such data for their crisis information and could therefore not be implemented.

Besides the data format itself, the visualization of the data is key in making the prototype comprehensible. MSB’s guidelines on how to visualize wildfire related crisis information includes recommendations regarding both point, line and polygon data. In the prototype, only some of the recommendations regarding the visualization of the polygons could be implemented. Due to GEE only implementing a basic set of point symbology in the platform and the polygon symbology is limited to a monochromatic fill with different opacity.

The location-based map interface is designed with the purpose of providing the user with the most relevant crisis information when in possible danger of wildfire. To achieve a user experience where the most relevant information is accessed, some data in the area-based part is left out in the location-based part, such as the SMHI, fire ban and evacuation accommodation data. This is done since it does not give any relevant information for an acute situation. The left-out data is, however, presented in the area-based map interface where it serves the purpose of giving the user an overview of the county situation and how one could prepare for a future wildfire crisis.

5.4 Google Earth Engine platform The GEE platform is an analytic tool suitable for analysis of satellite data. It has an extensive amount of data available directly in the prototype and provides many predefined tools for data analysis. However, it is not completely suitable for the prototype created.

Initially, the thought with the prototype was to use the built-in datasets in the GEE platform to perform analyses and create wildfire related data that would be a part of the prototype. However, detailed and adequate data was provided from the authorities or as open source data in vector format, making the raster data analyses redundant. This resulted in the prototype being completely vector based. GEE recently created the functionality to support vector data and processes vector operations relatively quickly. However, the visualization of large or detailed vector data sets are still not functioning very well and therefore the prototype is running slowly. The lack in functionality does not affect the information in the prototype but the user experience is affected negatively. This functionality is something that might be developed further in the future, if the demand for it is high.

Some limitations, regarding data handling, include not being able to make API requests directly in the prototype, which is a possibility in other platforms such as ODC. Besides that, it is not

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possible to upload empty shapefiles as an asset. This complicates the automatic ingestion of the API data, since a lack of announcements generates an empty shapefile.

GEE was however chosen as the platform for the prototype. The choice of platform was based both on the provided functionality used in the prototype, such as possibility to add own data as assets, predefined base maps and design features and the possibility to later on take advantage of the provided satellite data and create dynamic risk analyses that could complement the data provided today. However, the choice was made not only based on the functionality of the platform, but also on the connected tools. A main part of the thesis work handles the collection and compiling of the data from different sources such as different authorities, the public and online sources. This being completely dependent on the functionality of the Google Fusion Tables and Google Forms motivates the choice of GEE as a platform.

5.5 Flaws in the prototype The prototype provides an example of how information could be gathered and visualised to make sure that the public apprehends the information communicated by the authority. However, the prototype still contains several major flaws. Initially, the Fusion table of which some of the data handling is based will be removed and not able to use after 2019-12-03. This yields problems for the specific prototype hence it will not be able to use. The main concept of a joined information compilation, however, is still applicable using other products or functions as well. Further, regarding the experience of the prototype, a major flaw is that the symbology is not adapted to represent wildfires to the desired extent. In the platform, only the basic point symbology could be applied. This could be managed by building a model on top of the provided prototype that handles the symbology. In the prototype itself however, the obvious meaning of the symbols cannot be interpreted without a legend. The legend however also has some flaws. The symbology for the polygon data lacks the edge colour that is seen in the polygons in the map, and the point symbology is not completely consistent with the symbology in the map. The reason for this is that the legend is not a built-in function in GEE but instead created using the regular text symbology and colours. Some minor flaws in the prototype are mixed languages and an encoding problem of non-ASCII characters, i.e., the Swedish letters å, ä and ö. The cause for the mixed languages is usage of data distributed using API, that is only provided in Swedish and non-editable.

A major flaw regarding the user interface experience is that no object is clickable. In the functionality it is possible to mark a location that filters either adjacent information or information in the area in which the location was marked. However, the possibility to mark an object to receive specific information regarding it, is not a function provided in GEE. However, as a solution, the attribute information can be displayed in the panel using filtered drop-down menus. This is in several ways insufficient, especially since the selected object in the drop-down list is not connected to the visualization in the map, since it does not mark the object visually. Consequently, one can argue that the great importance of the marking function for the user experience, followed by the deficiencies in the drop-down menus, are reasons to consider another, more appropriate, platform for developing the prototype. Lastly, minor error handling is still insufficient, and the prototype has not undergone any extensive testing.

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6 Conclusions The research question to be answered in this thesis was:

How can authorities’ geographical data be collected, compiled and visualized using GIS to assure an effective crisis communication to the public?

For today’s crisis communication in Sweden, each county is responsible to communicate information concerning the crisis prevailing within the administrational area, this is done on each counties’ own website. The communicated information is either text-based or as “dead maps” where no dynamic data is present. There is, however, a national communication platform, Krisinformation.se, but, according to several surveys, it is only familiar to one out of four people. Consequently, today’s means of communication is perceived as scattered and insufficient by the public. This indicates that the objective of this thesis, to coordinate all authorities’ crisis information and visualize it on one common platform, is indeed coveted.

The results of the thesis show that the basis for a common crisis communication platform is structured data management. Through Google Fusion Tables with predetermined fields for input, the conditions needed to compile and then visualize data from different authorities are provided. Similarly, this ensures that a correct timestamp can be presented, which enables the use of dynamic data in the prototype. Further, the results show that handling of API data is an effective way of automatically collecting data from different sources without the need of human interaction. The limitation with API data is that the format of the downloaded data is locked and cannot be changed afterwards. However, this can be avoided by initially formatting the API data after a predetermined structure. This also applies to the crowdsource feature of the prototype. By establishing a standardized form for the user to fill in, the input data can be ingested into the platform correctly.

Due to the deficiencies in the user interface and slow visualization of the prototype’s data, one can conclude that GEE is not best fitted for development of vector-based platforms without any additional work done. The additional work would include to speed up visualization processes and handle specified symbology. It is however a good solution for collecting and compiling information from different sources and could in the future be complemented using raster data that is more suitable in the platform.

By visualizing polygons and not just points in the prototype, a larger part of GIS's potential is used. Further, the use of dynamic data in an interactive environment is a development from prior crisis communication method that can benefit the understanding of a crisis among the public.

Further, the prototype shows that geographical data from different authorities can be collected, compiled and taken in properly in a common communication platform and thereby visualize relevant information needed for the user to be able to handle a crisis.

In conclusion, an interactive platform with dynamic data that compiles all information needed to understand and act in a crisis is both needed and possible to create. The prototype collects

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and compiles all information presented during a crisis in one place, to create a uniform flow of information. This simplifies the comprehension of the information for the user, and the structure and automated data flow simplifies the work for authority representatives during a crisis, which results in a more accurate and frequently updated data.

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7 Future work For the Swedish crisis communication towards the public to work ideally and the public’s needs being met, without putting too much strain on the authorities, more research must be made on the subject. The research includes studies on how the public do in fact react to a crisis, since a current diversity of opinion seems to prevail. Not only is more research needed, but changes regarding data structure and data handling must be made within the authorities. This applies to when setting up crisis communication for other areas, e.g., such as flooding. As a suggestion, the data needed to be communicated should be determined followed with its associated structure for an easy implementation in a later stage. For the implementation to be possible, it is required that there is staff who are responsible for manually updating data and automatic data flows to work as devised.

Regarding the prototype, several features could be developed further as well. Concerning the automatic update of the data ingestion, it should be moved to an online, cloud server solution such as GCS. The service provides the possibility to create scripts and run them based on time set triggers, similar to the functionality used for the crowdsourced form. Besides that, the functionality of the prototype could be developed to include routing to enhance the usage of the prototype. This would mean that the user could get accurate directions, alternative options for routes and the closest route to any important location.

Further, the content of the prototype should be extended. In the current prototype, the focus is on ongoing wildfires, and therefore important information needed when the wildfire has been put out is frugal. This is unquestionably important information for anyone affected by the fire in any way. For people living in vicinity to an affected area, information regarding prohibited areas would be of use to visualize in the map, this to avoid injuries or casualties. However, for people or companies that owns the affected forest, information on compensation for the economic loss would be of interest as well. Besides extending the information regarding wildfires it could also be extended to be more general and handling different types of crises, such as flooding, storms, terrorist attacks etc. This would include finding the common information that needs to be provided during all crises and finding the specific information related to each crisis.

In addition, improvements should be done to improve the UI and thereby the experience and comprehension of the prototype. The prototype is somewhat complex in its current design but could be simplified by handling all the previously mentioned flaws in a suitable way. This including making objects clickable, implement the recommended symbology and correcting any language issues. Further improvement of the user experience of the prototype, the zoom handling should be improved. By clustering points to a point with associated numbers at a certain zoom level, the map interface becomes less cluttered. When zooming in on a certain level, the points would then be spread to their actual location. Since most of the flaws mentioned is not applicable in the GEE platform, the improvements would require the usage of another platform or to create a shell for the GEE data to be presented in, and thereby only use the data as input data. If another platform is used, the architecture could also be developed into an information push architecture, unlike the current prototypes architecture that is an information pull architecture. This would imply that the prototype would be a mobile application that runs

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in the background and, based on the user’s position, would provide relevant information through push notifications.

Lastly, the prototypes functionality and user interface should be evaluated in an extensive servey including both users from the public and the authorities to determine if the application functions as well as possible. However, regardless of the functionality, one must remember that the usage of digital aid during a crisis can be used to provide updated and accurate information, but that it is depending on the usage of electricity. Therefore, the usage of alternative energy sources, such as solar power, is needed for this to not only be seen as a supplement to the usage of transistor radios.

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Appendix A – Interview with representatives from MSB The interview begun at 10.02 2019-02-13 and lasted 48 minutes and 4 seconds. Participants: Susanne Ingvander (SI), Amanda Lägervik (AL), Jeanna Ullén (JU), Felix Althén Bergman (FB), Evelina Östblom (EÖ)

SI: Till att börja med så tänkte jag att ni får gärna beskriva ert projekt lite, vad det är ni har för, vad det är ni vill ha liksom, så vi vet vad det är vi ska berätta.

EÖ: Vår tanke från början var väl att titta lite på, vad kan det finnas för behov av information för det man märkte, framförallt på typ sociala medier, var att folk var ganska så gnälliga och missnöjda med informationen som var i somras, och titta lite på vad som faktiskt görs idag, som folk antagligen inte har någon aning om att det görs. Efter att ha pratat med våra lärare så ville de att vi skulle gå lite mer tekniskt, så våran plan är att, baserat på Google Earth Engine som plattform ta fram en prototyp för hur en applikation skulle kunna se ut, om man i ett drömscenario har all data som man behöver från landsting och kommuner och så. Så det är väl prototypen det ligger i, och då måste man ju titta på hur jobbar man idag, hur skulle man kanske kunna jobba om man får igenom allt lagmässigt och så och vilket behov finns från folk i allmänhet.

FB: Ja men exakt.

SI: Spännande.

EÖ: Så det är väl det vi ska titta på.

AL: Hur vill ni, har ni frågor som ni vill ställa eller?

FB: Ja jag tänker att vi kan gå igenom dom från A till Ö.

SI: Jag bara funderar på om vi lite generellt först ska dra hur vi jobbar med GIS på MSB.

AL: Absolut!

SI: GIS-gruppen är ju en grupp på 7 personer som jobbar på enheten för samverkan och ledning och vi gör det som, för att tillfredsställa de behoven som finns inom myndigheten, så vi driver inga egna utvecklingsprojekt, till stor del, utan oftast utför vi det som efterfrågas. Och, ett sådant exempel är att vi utvecklat den externa kartportalen till exempel där vi lägger vårt kartmaterial som man kan gå in och ladda ned, till exempel översvämningskartering och sånt. Sen har vi också utvecklat en intern portal där vi kan byta GIS-data inom, och det som står näst på tur är väl att ha någon slags portal som man kan ha mellan olika aktörer vid en händelse. För som det är nu har vi en intern och en offentlig men ingen sluten utåt om man säger så.

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Sen har ju vi en, när det gäller GIS vid en händelse, så har ju vi en mer samordnande funktion, vi har ju inget uppdrag att vi ska producera en viss typ av kartor utan den frågan som kommer från samhället om stöd, får ju vi värdera på MSB om vi kan ställa upp med och sen gör vi det vi kan.

Vi har ett uppdrag som är helt och hållet vårt och det är att aktivera Copernicus, för vi är den nationella kontaktpunkten och Copernicus är kartering via fjärranalys, och det är ju en EU-tjänst, så man aktiverar den och så får man tillbaka kartmaterial då. Det är det enda som är helt i vårt uppdrag att vi måste leverera, eller ställa upp med vid en händelse. Sen varierar det ju så mycket från händelse till händelse. Sen har vi ju också, inom en annan myndighet så ansvarar vi ju för att kunna, inspire-data, vet ni, det finns ju direktiv om vilka data varje land ska tillhandahålla öppet utåt, och det har ju vi några, vi har ju översvämningskarteringarna till exempel, och vi har brandrisk, vi har Sevesoanläggningar, alltså anläggningar med kemisk verksamhet, också vårt ansvar att se till att de finns publika.

Och, då ska jag komma till det här med en händelse, när det blir en händelse så, då har MSB en stab, och i här staben knyter man då till de här funktioner som kan tänkas behöva hjälpa till vid en specifik händelse, och som då i somras så gick GIS-gruppen in som en funktion där, Krisinfo är alltid en funktion där för det behövs alltid information till samhället. Ni (Redaktionen för Krisinformation.se) sitter alltid i den gruppen, men vi kommer bara in när det händer något specifikt som man känner att man behöver GIS-stöd för. I somras gick vi in i den gruppen med, alltså vår uppgift var att lösa förfrågningar som kom in, alltså alla frågor som kommer in till vår tjänsteman i beredskap fick vi då värdera om vi kunde lösa, och mycket handlade det då om att leverera information om var det brann och brandens utbredning. Det är det man vill veta, position och utbredning.

FB: Var fick ni dom förfrågningarna ifrån? Var det från...

SI: Ofta är det andra myndigheter som har verksamhet i området som vill veta om det brinner där de har sin verksamhet. Det är den vanligaste frågan. Det var en viss del förfrågningar från allmänheten, men i och med att det var så högt tryck på andra frågor så gick de frågorna direkt till kommunikationsavdelningen istället, för vi kunde inte sitta och svara varje person.

AL: Och där är det ju en utmaning att publicera någorlunda uppdaterat, då måste man ju också, hålla det a jour.

SI: Det var så vi jobbade i somras. Så vi har inget uppdrag att vi ska leverera en karta för allmänheten över händelsen. Det uppdraget ligger på respektive länsstyrelse, för vi har ju kommunalt självstyre och så har vi länsstyrelserna som är nästa ansvarsnivå. Därför har vi, alltså vi får inte gå in och köra över när det gäller sånt, utan det är upp till de här länsstyrelserna och om de känner att de behöver hjälp då kan de be oss: “Kan ni ta över det här?” eller “Kan ni hjälpa oss med det här?”, men vi går inte in själva. Sen så kan ju vi stödja i form av att lägga ut kartor, det kan vi ju göra.

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FB: Och de kartorna går oftast ut på Krisinformation.se då?

AL: Nej, jag kan berätta lite om hur vi fungerar. Vi har ju ett regeringsuppdrag att vara en webbportal för krisinformation. Vi startade 2008, så vi har funnits i 10 år, och fröet till det här såddes, tror jag, något år innan tsunamin, att man då, så modernt som det var då, att det behövdes en webbportal för att allmänheten ska hitta myndighetsinformation vid kris. Sen fick det ju såklart extra skjuts där efter tsunamin, för då var det ju ett problem för mång att man fick ha väldigt många olika myndighetskontakter och det fanns ingen stans där informationen var samlad. Så vi förmedlar helt enkelt bekräftad information från myndigheter, så vi hittar inte på någonting själva utan händer det någonting, en terrorattack, då måste vi dela, polisens information eller Stockholms stads. Vi försöker då samla så det ska bli översiktligt för allmänheten men att man sen då ska kunna hitta vidare direkt till ansvarig aktör. Så vi tar inte över ansvaret men vi hjälper allmänheten att hitta bekräftad information. Vi använder oss ju då av krisinformation.se och så har vi ju då vår app där vi också publicerar nyheter och har viss kartinformation. På instagram har vi lite mer då krisberedskapstips för i dagsläget har vi inte resurser att publicera krisinformation där. Vi går på beredskap dygnet runt, så vi är nio personer på redaktionen som dom flesta är journalister eller kommunikatörer i grunden, så vi ska kunna producera dygnet runt, oavsett vad som händer. Vi blir larmade av tjänsteman i beredskap och vi brinner för dialogen med allmänheten och försöker alltid att se allt ur allmänhetens perspektiv och vad man behöver och vi gör ganska korta nyheter. Det är ganska korta sammanfattningar för det blir, vi skriver inga romaner utan sammanfattar och försöker förenkla texterna och bearbeta texterna så det blir enkelt att förstå och sen som sagt länka vidare. Så vi har ju inget egentligen uppdrag idag med kartinformation, men vi vill ju, vi tycker att det är väldigt bra kompletterande, så sedan 2017 har vi en karta där vi till exempel samlar alla så kallade viktigt meddelande till allmänheten och sen sammanfattar vi det under årets slut och då kan man klicka in på sitt län och se hur det såg ut. Så vi ser det som en viktig del men det ingår inte i vårt uppdrag, men vi vill såklart kunna göra det så mycket som möjligt, men det kräver ju att vi får lite hjälpt till en början och så. Och, jag passar på att svara på några frågor direkt när vi ändå håller på.

Vi publicerar i första hand på svenska, men sedan i somras översätter vi även sådana här VMA och vädervarningar till engelska och även andra nyheter så fort det går. Anledningen till att vi valt just engelska är att för vi måste kunna ha överblick, för man sitter kanske själv en kväll och ska publicera någonting och ska då skriva på engelska och hålla den informationen uppdaterad. I dagsläget finns det bara översättningstjänster på dagtid och bara från engelska, som kan leverera så snabbt, inom 30 minuter, så vi har valt att satsa på det. Vi skriver självklart i klarspråkig engelska och klarspråkig svenska, så att man förstår även om man bara kan lite svenska. Det är lite basic om vad vi gör.

FB: Jättebra.

SI: Hur ofta uppdaterar ni? Är det när något händer?

AL: Ja precis, så tyvärr nu i januari och februari är det ju lite stiltje, men i somras under de mest brännande veckorna kan det ju bli fyra nyheter per dag beroende på, och det byggs ju på vad som händer då. Då utfärdades det ju VMA och tyvärr var vi så lågt bemannade den veckan så vi hann

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inte hålla VMA-kartan uppdaterad just under den veckan, så den fick vi, vi måste ju fokusera i första hand då på själva nyheterna och informationen. Vi fick se det som ett övningsår, och nu har vi lärt upp fler, så fler kan uppdatera, så om det brinner i sommar igen kommer vi kunna bli ännu vassare där.

AL: Är det något mer? Ni kanske vill se frågorna, så ser ni vad ni ska fråga om?

EÖ: Det här har vi ju fått väldigt bra svar på tycker jag, vi har även haft en intervju innan med Nina Åkerman med i princip samma frågor, och där gällde också “svara så gott du kan på det som du känner att du kan svara på”, så just kring hur det ser ut idag och varför fick vi ganska bra svar på där också.

FB: Men vi kan väl ta “Från vilka källor tar man in information?” Det blir väl lite riktat till dig (Susanne) kanske.

SI: Ja för nu tänker jag att nu går vi in på kartor.

FB: Ja exakt.

SI: Vid en sådan här händelse, då handlar det om, specifikt vid bränder då, att veta var det brinner och hur stor yta det är som brinner. Den informationen får man ju ta utifrån vad man kan. Copernicus är en källa till exempel. I somras fick vi händelserapporter från SOS mailat till oss som Excel-filer med koordinater. De uppdateras på deras hemsida också och de filerna fick vi ut som Excel-listor så vi kunde göra kartor. Sen på MSB har vi också något som heter Händelserapporteringssystemet hos vår statistikenhet. Men det systemet är baserat på att räddningstjänsterna rapporterar in när en händelse är avslutad, så under pågående bränder får man inte in någon information från dem, utan då fokuserar ju de på att släcka branden, och sen när de rapporterar så får vi lite mer statistik, vilken typ av vegetation som har brunnit och hur stor yta det var, uppskattat, när det började brinna, när det slutade. Saker man kan göra mer analyser på efteråt då. Så i somras hade vi en annan källa som vi använde oss av. Kustbevakningen flög med sin IR-utrustning. Det är också en källa. Länsstyrelser och kommuner med proaktiva GIS:are sprang i fält på olika sätt, räddningsledare i fält, vissa satt med i staben och GIS:aren fick då se vilka vägar som var avspärrade och fick då en uppfattning om hur stor branden är. Det är väldigt många källor som vi då får ta in och bearbeta. Så det som hamnar hos oss är då att det kommer data med olika insamlingstyp och det kommer data vid olika tidpunkter. Problemet är att översätta det här till information som är enkel att förstå. För när man ska formulera information vid en kris måste det vara så lätt att tolka att det inte missförstås. Sätter du en punkt, då kan man tro att det bara är vid den punkten det händer något och att alla andra ytor är säkra, så är det ju inte.

Har du en yta, de stora, sen är det ju så här också att vi jobbade med fokusområden, jag kan visa, jag har en karta här. Det här är alla bränder som rapporterades in i augusti, och det är över fem tusen stycken, men många av dem var ju kanske att det brann tio gånger tio meter och man åkte dit och sprutade med en brandbil och släckte den och sen var det över. Men så har vi ju också Ljusdal och dem som bara växte och växte, otroligt fort. Det är ju helt olika typer av bränder, och

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därför hade vi så kallade fokusområden över de stora bränderna. Över de bränderna satt det en GIS:are på plats, antingen från länsstyrelsen eller kommun som då hjälpte till att kartera det här området. De rapporterade då information till oss och vi rapporterade till dom, information.

Men det här med då, jag såg frågan om en nationell karta, men problemet är ju då, att sammanställa en nationell bild är ju väldigt svårt, och det är ju därför då också länsstyrelserna la ut över sina regioner, var det brann. För det är de som har den detaljerade informationen över sitt område och informerade dem i sitt område också. När det blir så här över hela landet är det klart att man vill ha en karta över hela Sverige, men det är svårt också för om man tittar på till exempel händelserapporterna från SOS, den ser ju olika ut tre gånger om dagen. De som brann på morgonen var ju många släckta på kvällen, medan andra bränder hade blivit dubbelt så stora under dagen. Det finns ett väldigt stort, det är en svårighet i indatat, hur man ska hantera det för att man ska kunna leverera information som är lätt att tolka för allmänheten men också för aktörerna. Jag menar det är, när vi till exempel levererade ett GIS-skikt över en brandyta i Ljusdal till en aktör som har någon verksamhet i området då är det väldigt enkelt, för då gör de en överlagringsanalys och så ser de att här brinner det, vi har något här och vi måste åka ut till exempel och kolla eller vi har inget där. På nationell nivå är det svårare att få den här helhetsbilden.

Det som gjordes i somras var att skogsstyrelsen, som har deras kris-GIS-organisation, började direkt att kartera med hjälp av satellitdata utöver Copernicus-data så de fick ganska snabbt också ett underlag om var det brann och de har också ganska mycket personer i fält, så de har också mycket lokalkännedom och kunde kartera småbränder ganska snabbt. Då diskuterade vi hur i vida vi eller, ja, vem som skulle lägga upp en karta och då lades den nationella överblicksbilden upp av skogsstyrelsen i somras. Då de redan hade en portal, Skogens Pärlor, den hade dom, så då tog de det uppdraget, för vi hade så mycket med att skicka data mellan andra aktörer och också våra fokusområden. Så de tog då det här helhetsgreppet och då hade vi samverkandemöte med dem flera gånger i veckan.

EÖ: Ja vi tittade lite på, jag är från Gävle, så länsstyrelsen är lite, jag gick in och kikade på, det låg ju ganska nära hjärtat också, och det var ju från deras första nyhet att det brinner till att första kartan med ytor kom upp var ju bara runt ett dygn, så de var ju väldigt snabba med att få upp. Men allting som man kunde hitta på webb och så är ju döda kartor. De visar att här är det avstängt och så, men man kan inte få ut någon mer information. Så det är väl detta som vi har diskuterat mest, just att kunna få en interaktiv karta och kunna arbeta med. Det låter som att det är något som önskas.

AL: Ja det vore ju fantastiskt, det är något som alla vill ha men det är svårt att göra.

EÖ: Ja men verkligen, så det behov som vi sett mest hittills har ju varit just det. Men sen är det också att det kommer information i olika format och så ska det kunna uppdateras kontinuerligt och då är det ju svårt om man får det på mail i Excel-form och ha det flytande uppdateras hela tiden. Så det är jätteskönt att få en bredare bild av vad det är som ligger bakom det hela.

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SI: Länsstyrelserna specifikt har ju bra avtal med GISleverantörer att de har möjligheten att ha interaktiva webbkartor men oftast när man lägger en lägesbild så är den fortfarande statisk. Man sätter ett klockslag på den och att så här ser det ut. Vi har inte kommit till att en lägesbild är dynamisk ännu tyvärr. Vi jobbar ju på det och vi tittar på möjligheterna men just det här med att, som du sa, uppdateringsintervall, innehåll, man måste ju kunna säkerställa att informationen i kartan är så korrekt som möjligt. Om man då säger att “det här är en dynamisk karta” och två timmar senare så har branden dubblerats men vi har inte hunnit uppdatera, då tänker man att så här är sanningen, när man tittar på den dynamiska kartan, men det är inte sanningen, för vi har inte hunnit uppdatera den dynamiska kartan med en händelse som uppdateras väldigt fort.

AL: Då kan det ju bli fara för liv, man är ju väldigt rädd att gå ut med fel information. Men det vore ju fantastiskt om det fanns såklart.

EÖ: Om vi tittar lite på appen, så när vi har kikat i den så är det att det placeras nålar.

AL: Precis, det är ju egentligen de här frågorna då som min kollega som har utvecklat appen, men jag kan svara på det mest basic så länge, så ska vise om jag, ja.

EÖ: Ja för när vi har kikat på appen så ser vi ju att man kan sortera på SMHI, Trafikverket och Krisinformation och sen att det sitter nålar på områden. De nålarna, placeras de ut som center för ett område eller där de är?

AL: Precis, de gör de, det är när vi skriver en nyhet så taggar vi den med till exempel Gävleborgs län och då är det där den placeras ut, om man inte har en exakt position, och då kan vi lägga in det manuellt, men ofta vill man bara få ut det snabbt. Så kanske man kan lägga till det sen. Men generellt så är det så, så det kan ju förbättras såklart, men det gäller ju att få tag på den informationen.

EÖ: Ni har inte arbetat någonting med ytor eller linjer utan det är bara punktplaceringar?

AL: Precis, som sagt, jag vågar inte riktigt svara på det för jag sitter inte i apputvecklingsprojektet där.

SI: Det kan jag nog svara på. Vi granskade ju appen när den gick ut, GIS-gruppen, och det var ju en fråga, varför är det inte linjer och ytor också. Men det är ju så att det måste vara så tolkningsbart som möjligt, sen vet jag inte om den funktionaliteten ens stödjer ytor och linjer eller inte, jag vet inte vad det är för bakgrund till lösningen. I alla fall handlar det om det här tolknings, att om allt är punkter och aldrig är en yta, det är det som är också. Att GISa vid en kris är så svårt, för om något har en väldigt tydlig gräns, då är det ju lätt att säga att här är det säkert, här är det inte säkert. Om något har en diffus gräns eller en gräns som rör sig, då är det väldigt svårt, och då kanske man sätter en punkt, men då förstår man inte att det är en yta istället för en punkt, och det är ju väldigt svårt det här, att det ska vara säkert. Vid en kris så tolkar man saker väldigt snabbt, man tittar och tänker “det här är sanningen” och så går man vidare och då måste det vara så pass lätt att inte misstolka. Då är en punkt alltid lättast, för då har man i alla fall inte sagt för mycket.

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EÖ: För det vi tittade på när det är lite stiltje på appen är just att, det har vält en lastbil mellan den här och den här trafikplatsen, och där blir det att om jag till exempel skulle åka till västkusten och att det där är en information om en väg som jag kommer passera så har jag ingen aning om vad trafikplatserna heter. Där hade det till exempel kunna vara att ni i text skriver att denna och denna trafikplats, så kanske det skulle kunna tolkas och bli en linje som automatiskt visas för vägar till exempel. Det är sådant som vi har funderat på tidigare.

AL: Har vi några andra frågor innan app, som sagt, jag tror verkligen att Jeanna kan svara bäst på de frågorna.

EÖ: Vi kan vänta in, men vi kikade på, vi tänkte att det är ju en vetenskaplig uppsats vi gör, så vi går igenom Facebook.

AL: Spännande!

EÖ: Vi kikade på just Krisinformations Facebookflöde egentligen innan bränderna bröt ut som värst, och kikade på vad man la upp där och vad man länkade till, just för att när man tittade i kommentarerna som fanns så var det ganska mycket allmänt gnäll och gnöl på folk.

AL: Ja, jag känner igen det här.

EÖ: Och folk som säger att “ni borde göra så här” och “ni borde göra” så vi tittade lite på hur man skickas vidare och vilken information som man hänvisas till. Då var de ju att de allra flesta gick till Krisinformation.se:s nyheter där, och att därifrån fanns många länkar vidare, precis som ni har sagt att det fungerar. Det var först, från Facebook, tre eller fyra klick bort innan man hittade någon form av kartmaterial över huvud taget, och det var ganska mycket länkar iväg och sen länkar tillbaka igen och vi upplevde nog att det var ganska rörigt att försöka hitta just specifik information om det man undrade.

AL: Tänker du på kartorna då eller generellt?

EÖ: Rent allmänt egentligen, sen är problemet också just eftersom det är många av länkarna som inte fanns längre då man har tagit ner den, så gjorde det också att det blev lite svårare.

AL: Just gällande kartinformation är ju verkligen ett, det är ju i första hand information vi hanterar så just kartor är inte vårt fokus men det är klart att vi skulle vilja göra det bättre också såklart.

EÖ: Ja för det var ju en fråga, varför man inte har en karta direkt på webben idag. Men den kartan som finns i appen till exempel, skulle det kunna vara en möjlighet att ha på hemsidan så att man kan se och välja de nyheter som kommer upp, för vi har inte hittat någon kartapplikation där

FB: På själva hemsidan

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AL: Det skulle säkert absolut kunna vara något, det är en jättebra idé. Vi kan kolla med Jeanna sen om hon funderat på det.

FB: För ni har ju all information, men det är kanske ofta att man scrollar då bland de här olika

AL: Nu kommer hon fröken app

FB: Ja okej, ja men att man scrollar då genom de här händelserna, och då skulle det vara jättepraktiskt då att ha att snabbt kunna klicka direkt

AL: Ja men det är ju jättesmart, att man har så det kompletterar, istället för att klicka i nyhetsflödet på webben att man även kan använda en karta där för att hitta sitt område. Det är en jättebra idé och det är nog inget som vi har funderat över.

Alla: Hej!

EÖ: Får vi be dig att sätta dig här på flygen för vi spelar in, så vi kan transkribera det och ha det som källa sedan.

AL: Du kan sitta bredvid mig om du vill. Vi har precis gått igenom de här basic frågorna och inte börjat med appen ännu. Men de berättade just om en ganska spännande idé att kan man använda som kartan i appen att även ha på webben någon stans.

EÖ: Vi har ju massor av frågor om appen såklart, och de har sagt “vänta med det, vänta med det, vänta med det!” För det är du som har tagit fram appen? Har du lust att berätta lite allmänt om bakgrund till och plattformen och så och grund?

JU: Hur menar du plattform?

EÖ: Om du har byggt den?

JU: Vi har ju inte byggt den, det är en byrå som gör, men det är ju för IOS och Android.

EÖ: Ja precis för den använder ju Google-kartan till exempel, och i vårt examensarbete så kommer vi att ta fram en prototyp till en plattform som skulle kunna vara ett alternativ till en plattform, med de förslag som vi har eller kommer fram till under examensarbetet. Då kommer vi använda Google Earth Engine som basplattform och arbeta med för att hålla till Googlekarta och så samt att det är en ganska så lätt plattform att arbeta med. Så det var det jag tänkt, om ni har bakgrunden till, men då är det någon annan som har tagit fram appen?

JU: Rent tekniskt är de det, för vi kan inte allt det tekniska.

EÖ: För vi hade lite frågor om hur man tar in data till appen?

JU: Ja, det är ju öppet API vi använder då, från de tre källor vi har som är våra egna nyheter, SMHI:s vädervarningar och trafikverkets trafikvarningar, så det är öppen data alltihop.

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FB: Och ni, du (Susanne) pratade lite om SOS Alarm, är det något som ni har haft, hur kommer det sig att inte det är en källa?

JU: Jag tror inte deras data är öppen

SI: De har inget API. Det är därför vi också fick en läsning av deras system tre gånger om dagen under bränderna. Det var en deal vi hade, vi kunde inte gå in och skörda data.

AL: Har det att göra med att det är ett statligt bolag?

SI: Jag vet faktiskt inte

JU: Och att de har så mycket integritetstänk. För vi har ju tillgång till deras samverkanswebb, som ni kanske känner till då antar jag, som är en karta med alla larm. Men då är det ju vilken adress som en ambulans går till och allting, så då måste de ju känna sig väldigt säkra på att de som använder datan skalar bort allt som kan vara integritetskränkande då tänker jag.

FB: Ja med GDPR och så

SI: Det är också så att om det händer något ska man inte kunna zooma ner på att det sitter en nål i ett hus. För när det gäller vad som levererades i branden 2014 till exempel då var det ju bara nere på enkilometersrutor från SEB på vilka som bor i området, mer detaljerad information får man ju inte lägga upp.

EÖ: Ja, appen, så som vi nämnde innan, det är ju lite stiltje i januari och februari, det händer inte jättemycket, så när vi har tittat på den så har det varit brand i någon sopstation och så lite trafik, risk för snö, i fjällen, mest. Men används appen även när det är typ som bränderna i somras eller så?

JU: Absolut, det är ju alla våra nyheter från Krisinformation.se går ju in i flödet, så det spelar ingen roll vilken händelse det är, allting går till appen.

FB: Sen pratade vi tidigare om det här med att ni har punkter som ni visualiserar, har ni möjlighet för linjer och ytor när ni visar?

JU: Vad betyder det?

FB: Till exempel, som vi pratade om, det här att om det är en trafikolycka mellan två stycken trafikplatser, att man kanske kan visa det på en linje istället för en punkt då det är just mellan två stycken trafikplatser, eller när det brinner så är det ett område istället för en punkt. Finns den möjligheten i appen just nu?

JU: Nej det gör det inte, dels när det gäller trafikverket och SMHI så kommer det ju direkt från dem, det är deras data. När det gäller våra egna så lägger vi ju dem med GPS, eller ja, helt enkelt.

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FB: Så ni gör ingen riktig, ni gör inte någon bearbetning av den data ni får nej, utan den kommer som en API.

JU: Nej det är ju endast när det är våra egna nyheter som vi kan välja exakt en punkt, men då är det ju en punkt. Så om det är en sopstation säger vi, som brinner, då lägger vi den punkten på den sopstationen.

EÖ: Men vägdatan som ni får från Trafikverket, är det i textform eller i koordinater som man kan sätta ut?

JU: Nej det kommer, det är helt paketerat när det kommer, så det bearbetar vi inte alls, förutom att vi väljer hur det ska visas textmässigt då i flödet.

SI: Jag tror så här, jag tror att deras varningar kommer som punkter och annars har man ju NVDB, om man ska ha linjer så måste man ha deras vägdatabas och jag tror inte att det finns en koppling, att de lyfter den sträckan och den noden ifrån.

JU: Jag vet inte hur de gör på sin egen, det vet väl du (Susanne) säkert.

SI: Ja, eh, nej, faktiskt inte

JU: Om de bearbetar det på något annat sätt än vad vi gör.

FB: Det skulle vi kunna kolla på

AL: Ja precis, de kan säkert vara intressanta att prata med också

JU: Ni får jättegärna prata med vår byrå också om ni vill

FB: Ja det skulle vara bra, vad heter de?

JU: Valtech, jag kan ta fram kontaktperson där till er

FB: Det vore jättebra

JU: Så får ni veta mer om hur de har gjort rent tekniskt, för det har inte vi så bra koll på

SI: Det är punkter för dem också, så jag tror att en händelse blir en punkt.

EÖ: Ja för det är väl det som vi har märkt mest är att det är ingen egentligen som har tyckt att det har uppdaterats för sällan eller så, utan det är just, framförallt med branden i somras som vi har tittat lite på är att folk efterfrågade annat än bara punktplacering. Men nu har vi ju förstått att det ligger annat bakom med diffusa gränser, att gränser rör sig och att det händer saker hela tiden. Så det är det som vi har tittat på mest.

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JU: Men det där hade ju du (Amanda) och jag diskussioner om bara när det gällde VMA nu, för vi plottar ju ut alla VMA på en karta, och min instinkt var att sätta den där det brann, men Amanda påminde mig då om att det är ju där folk bor som man varnar, det är ju till de som bor som varningen går. Inte där det brinner, för där brinner det ju och där är det ingen som ska ge sig av. Så flyttade vi på dem, så det där är svårt.

AL: Ja det är jättesvårt, man vill ju såklart vara jättetydlig

SI: Sen om man pratar om i somras så är ju skillnaden på geodata och händelsedata. Att geodata är ett testat, kvalitetssäkrat data som levereras av en dataleverantör, men sen vid sådana händelser så skapar man så otroligt mycket data, men även den här datan måste vara kvalitetssäkrad, det måste vara säkra källor, så det är ju det också. Har du då tre olika insamlingssätt, en drönare en person i fält, en satellit så får du helt olika underlag. De går inte att sätta ihop till ett dataset, för då har man helt olika upplösning och noggrannhet och olika in-tid. Själva knäckfrågan är hur man ska hantera sådana här rörliga dataset och innan man kan leverera dem till allmänheten måste man vara helt säker på sin sak.

AL: Innan någonting nytt har hänt.

SI: Vi förstår ju kritiken från i somras, “Jag ska göra den här vägen och varför har ni inte en karta så jag ser om det brinner där jag ska köra?”, det är ju jättesvårt, du kanske kan köra där men det kanske är så rökigt att det inte går, det är jättediffust.

AL: Ja att röken går just med den vinden, där men att det inte syns någonstans

SI: Då kanske det är så att det är bättre att inte åka till stugan den helgen än att vi ska försöka leverera en karta som visar att röken går två meter från vägen, du kan köra eller nej det gjorde den inte, det blåste över vägen, nu kan du inte köra. Sen har vi, det är ganska mycket lagliga frågor i det här också. Vi har ju mycket öppna data i Sverige, men alla data är ju inte öppna, det är de ju inte. Då är frågan, om man inte kan visa all information, vilken information ska man visa i en sån här kartapplikation, för om informationen inte är öppen så finns den inte, förstår ni? Vad händer sen om man lagrar mycket olika information ovanpå varandra, hur tolkar man det och blir det osäkert på något sätt om man lägger mycket information ovanpå varandra? En tydlig fråga: om man gör en översvämningskartering, ska husen vara översvämmade eller inte? Om husen inte är översvämmade så kommer de inte upp om man gör en analys.

Jag tänkte bara visa ett exempel, jag kan skicka den här länken sen om ni vill. Det här är Norge, de har ju lite öppnare data än vi. Då har de lagt all sin karta, jag säger inte att det här är rätt, det är ju snyggt, frågan är ju om det är okej, hur vi ser på det i Sverige. Då har de lagt upp allting, till exempel inom beredskap har de lagt upp, grundkartan är ju deras som vår lantmäterikarta, men den är ju inte öppen för allmänheten, helt på alla sätt.

FB: Det här är deras motsvarande MSB?

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SI: Ja DSB är deras MSB. Då har de lagt upp här, polisregioner, deras 112-centraler, hälsoregioner, de har lagt här upp om förskolor och skolor, här har de var de har sina civilförsvarsdistrikt, det finns otroligt mycket information och de har lagt upp precis allting. Men frågan är vad som händer om man lägger all information så här, hur används den? Det är också en fråga, de har ju valt att göra så här, vi har inte valt i Sverige att ha en så här helt öppen, samla allt på ett ställe karta. Vi har ju våran, den öppna information som finns idag finns ju på Geodataportalen, den har ni också sett antar jag. Där kan man göra analyser.

FB: Jo jag tänkte på en grej, vi har ju pratat lite om det här med att när något händer så kan det vara betryggande att veta vilka åtgärder som tas från myndigheterna. Vi var ju lite inne på det, och du (SI) pratade ju om att rapporteringen sker efter, kanske, men jag frågar ändå frågan. Tror du att det finns en möjlighet att man kan visa på, till exempel i appen, att här brinner det och så har man en åtgärdsinfo där? Då kanske man får från brandmyndigheten vad de gör för åtgärd? Skulle det kanske kunna vara ett komplement till allmänheten?

SI: Varje kommun, eller räddningstjänst är ju kommunal, så varje kommun har ju rätt att lösa det där på sitt vis, som de vill, och vi kan inte som myndighet gå in och säga att “ni ska rapportera just det här”, det gör vi inte, utan då måste vi skriva någon form av föreskrift. I sådana fall är det ju om SOS skulle kunna tillhandahålla den informationen, för de får de ju inrapporterat till sig. I sådana fall är ju det upp till SOS alarm om de skulle kunna tänka sig att tillhandahålla någon sådan tjänst. För de kommer automatiskt när de avrapporterar vilka typer av fordon som åker. Det är ju någon form av åtgärd som visar att kommer det en stegbil eller kommer det tio brandbilar istället för två.

FB: Ja vi har mycket idéer, man vet ju inte om det går att göra, men vi vill ju gärna kolla

SI: Ledsen att jag drar upp så mycket begränsningar, det är ju också bra att vara kreativ och se lösningar och sen måste man ju gå igenom det här, både den lagliga aspekten och

EÖ: Ja och om det är någon som inte har alla de här begränsningarna i medvetandet så kan man komma upp med nya idéer som man inte har testat innan på grund av att man har varit lite låst och samtidigt har vi räknat med att 99 % av det vi kommer på kommer antagligen inte att funka, men fördelen med att göra ett examensarbete är att vi kan ju lämna det här som ett förslag på vad som skulle kunna vara i framtiden om man arbetar på ett annat sätt i allmänhet, så vi har ju begränsningarna i åtanke, men kan snarare lämna som förslag att den här begränsningen skulle man kunna göra om på ett annat sätt

SI: Och det är ju bra att tänka högt

AL: Precis, och tänka fritt

SI: Och sen får någon annan stå för det lagliga

EÖ: Jag känner mig ganska nöjd, har du (Felix) något mer?

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JU: Ni hade ju lite mer appfunderingar

FB: Ja, sista frågan, finns det planer på att utveckla appen vidare?

JU: Det gör det, nästa steg nu kommer bli att först få notiser för allt igen, vilket vi har haft förut också, men det fungerade inte så bra så vi har byggt om hela notisverktyget. Så det är det första som kommer hända att man kommer kunna välja notiser för allt och allt kommer vara gjort för det såklart då. Sedan har vi också planer på att bygga om så att allt ska utgå från kartan, så flödet blir, nu är det ju flödet man kommer in på först, men sen ska man komma in på kartan först är tanken och så får man välja flödet om man vill det. Men kartan ska vara utgångsläge. Vi ska också lägga till mer information i kartan, vad får vi se, men typ var det finn hjärtstartare och sådana saker.

FB: Skulle det finnas andra källor än de tre ni har? Har ni tänkt lite på vilka möjligheter det finns på andra källor?

JU: Ja det som vi kanske haft som en dröm från början är ju att alla kommuner ska kunna vara med, men det kräver ju att de bygger ett system som funkar, så alla använder samma forum eller vad man ska säga för att få in datat. Så det är väl mer en fantasi än så länge. Vi får väl se. Sen finns det ju massor av olika källor man kan tänka sig att få in. Polis, brandstationer.

FB: Vi var ju lite inne på det här med symbologin också, i appen, till exempel de olika, trafikverket som har kanske en bil, istället för att alla är pinnar, så att man enkelt kan urskilja. Nu har ni ju i och för sig att man kan släcka och tända lager mellan SMHI, så det hjälper ju, men också att förtydliga med sådana symboler.

EÖ: För det har vi pratat om lite också, att vi kommer försöka lägga ganska mycket fokus på just hur det visualiseras, som du (Amanda) pratade om att man verkligen försöker skriva texten enkelt och lättförståeligt, så även om man inte kan så mycket svenska eller så mycket engelska så ska man kunna ta till sig informationen. Just i det grafiska kunna visa det så att man ska förstå att något har hänt och basen av vad som har hänt utan att kanske egentligen ha läst ett enda ord, utan kunna se var det är placerat, och se på symbologin, vad det är som har hänt.

AL: Det är ju jättebra

JU: Jag undrar om inte Android har så för där använder vi ju en Google-karta eller vad det nu är, att det är symboler för sjukhus och sådant, men jag är inte 100 % säker på det, men vi själva har ju inte det. Så det är ju en bra idé.

SI: Det pågår ju två projekt om blåljuskarta, att det ska tas fram en blåljuskarta. Detta för att vid problem med navigation eller så, och då ska man använda trafikverkets vägdata och lantmäteriets karta och sen ska alla krisberedskapsaktörer ha tillgång till denna då. Där pågår också ett symbolprojekt och det finns en, nu är inte det nere på detaljnivå för ikoner, men det finns riktlinjer för det på vår hemsida, som kan vara kul för er att läsa när ni gör ert arbete.

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FB: Vad hette det, blåljuskartan?

SI: Ja, blåljuskarta, det är ett projekt mellan trafikverket, MSB och lantmäteriet, att man ska sammanföra den här informationen i en karta

FB: Den måste jag kolla

SI: Den är inte uppe ännu

FB: Då så, då sitter jag på nålar till dess

SI: Eller så kommer er rapport först

FB: En fråga, du (Amanda) kanske vet det, vi hittade en rapport där det var en undersökning på 2000 svenskar som gjordes om kriskommunikation. Nu har jag i och för sig mailkontakt med, vem det nu var

JU: Kristian

FB: Ja precis, och det görs ju en ny undersökning tror jag, hur går det med den?

AL: Den är väl i princip klar snart och jag vet inte om du varit i kontakt med min kollega linda om den kanske

FB: Nej, jag tror inte det

JU: Det var hon som svarade första gången

AL: Så den kommer vi väl dela när den är klar, och den kommer vara öppen så den får ni absolut ta del av, men jag kan inte säga exakt när den kommer ut, för det var några data som vi behövde få in ytterligare där.

JU: De hade glömt lägga på genuslagrets perspektiv, så det fanns ingen demografi över huvud taget, och det vill vi ju inte ha

AL: Så vi väntar in det

FB: Ja det hade varit supernyttigt för oss

AL: Ja för oss med, så det ska bli väldigt spännande och se vad folk tycker.

FB: Ja om inte ni har något som ni kan komma på från ingen stans så är vi nöjda

EÖ: Ja jag känner mig nöjd

AL: Det låter jätteintressant och det ska bli kul att se

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SI: Vi läser gärna rapporten och ser prototypen, så kan vi inspireras lite

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