13. A Cybercartographic Tool for Supporting Disaster Prevention Planning Processes and Emergency Management in Mexico City

Researchers at Mexico’s CentroGeo have developed a cybercartographic tool under the acronym Geodisplat. The objective of this chapter is to present this tool and its potential to support processes of disaster prevention planning and emergency management in Mexico City. Geodisplat is an interactive-computerized tool that allows the fusion of pieces of information and data from multiple sources and the modeling of systems that interact in the disaster cycle. Navigation in Geodisplat is guided by a conceptual model with vulnerability serving as the central concept for the spatial analysis of disaster, and planning as the process with the capacity to diminish vulnerability. Disasters are approached in stages that comprise “before”, “during”, and “after” a natural or technological catastrophe occurs at a certain place and time. Planning groups need to understand factors that increase human and system vulnerabilities at different times during the disaster cycle and, in a procedural sense, to adapt their activities to the decision-making environment in which they find themselves operating. The tool’s main contribution lies in its capacity to support the decision maker’s information needs during the different stages of the disaster cycle, and to do so in an efficient and timely way.