Quality check of crisis maps produced over five years by copernicus ems

Abstract

Crisis mapping is a widely used tool for the digital representation of a disaster situation. It provides stakeholders with spatial information of the crisis describing type and severity of damages, impact on the area and its population. The quality of crisis maps is of a great importance, since the disaster response depends on the provided information. In some cases, in order to deliver a map on time, its quality can be lower than expected. The evaluation of a big sample of rapid maps produced between 2013 and 2017 and collected from open source Copernicus service have been performed. The quality check has been performed by visual analysis, observing around 36 parameters defined in the validation protocol designed at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. Overall conclusion is that crisis maps produced during the observed period have shown good level of the quality, that can satisfy the need of user. Still, there are some parameters that could be delivered with more details and precision. The results are analysed in details and remarks are presented.