Earthquakes bring down cities, wildfires ravage millions of acres of land, floods wash away homes and lives, volcanoes devastate towns and villages, hurricanes roar down on populous coasts, tornadoes rip mile-wide paths up and down the countryside. Mother Nature does what she does, and in the face of her fury, a comprehensive and effective system of preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery seems an unlikely possibility.

Geographic information systems, however, are just that, providing the means not to conquer Mother Nature, but to get out of her way, and soften her blows when we can't.

From deciding where to build new fire stations and in which stations to keep ladder trucks, to monitoring disasters as they happen, in real time, with only a PC and an Internet connection, from mapping wildfires tens of thousands of acres in size with GPS equipment and a helicopter, to processing raw data and providing information products around the entire Pacific Rim, GIS is making emergency management a faster and more accurate means of helping people cope.

About the author:

Gary Amdahl has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe. He is a staff writer and editor at ESRI Press