This Master degree project identified disasters and emergencies as a global
humanitarian and technological challenge. Emergency management organizations' need
for access to accurate and up-to-date information about the emergency situation, to help
respond to, recover from and mitigate the effects of disasters and emergencies, present a
challenge to the field of Geomatics.
Today the use of remote sensing technologies presents an increasing number of
solutions. There are types of spatial data, however, e.g. submerged, non-visual or
otherwise hidden features that still require emergency field personnel and volunteers to
interpret and record. By utilizing the increasing ubiquity and computational power of
modern smartphones, in order to reach a large number of potential users and volunteers,
a mobile application for emergency field data collection was developed. It was
developed as a component of a system that, in order to be as collaborative, adaptable
and accessible as possible, also to resource-poor organizations, was, with a minor
exception, completely open-source licensed.