Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing Assessment
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has been a leader in the development, implementation, and application of systems, science, and technology for geographic information since 1969, well before commercial geographic information systems (GIS) offerings. The GIS mission at ORNL is to support national environmental, energy, and defense programs through research, development, and application of geographic information and analysis systems. Typical applications have included assessment of air-training routes, three-dimensional terrain visualization, siting of weapons facilities, transportation routing, hazardous-waste and hydrogeologic studies, terrain and landform analysis, military-base comprehensive planning and facilities management, natural-resource management, population-at-risk studies around hazardous sites, studies of coastal habitat change from satellite imagery, land-use modeling, environmental impact analysis, natural-hazard prediction and modeling, and emergency management.
Estimating Population at Risk
Natural and manmade disasters place vast populations at risk, often with little or no advance warning. Geographic information is essential for quick and effective response. How will a contaminant be dispersed? Where will it go? How many people are at risk? Who are they? Where are they? Emergency response by the United Nations, the United States, and other national and international organizations requires simulation of disasters, and population data undoubtedly are the critical elements in such analyses.
To enhance our capability in emergency planning and management, we need not only to estimate the population at an even finer level but also to determine population distribution during the day. Using an innovative approach with Geographic Information System and Remote Sensing, ORNL researchers have made significant progress towards solving this problem. As part of its LandScan global population project for DoD, ORNL has developed a high-resolution (1-km cell) population-distribution model (LandScan 1998, 2000, and 2001) for the entire world. LandScan is the finest global population data ever produced and is 2400 times more spatially refined than the previous standard. As an expansion to global LandScan, ORNL is developing very high resolution (90-m cell) population-distribution data (LandScan USA) for the United States. At this resolution, population-distribution data include nighttime (residential) as well as daytime distributions. The potential benefit of LandScan USA has been demonstrated for 29 counties covering coastal Texas and Louisiana, including the Houston metropolitan area.
For additional information, including examples of ORNL's work, click one of the links below.
For additional details, contact:
Budhendra Bhaduri
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
P.O. Box 2008, MS 6237
Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6237
phone: (865) 241-9272
fax: (865) 241-6261
email: bhaduribl@oml.gov