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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GEOMATICS AND GEOSCIENCES Volume 1, No 1, 2010

© Copyright 2010 All rights reserved Integrated Publishing services Research Article ISSN 0976 – 4380

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Emergency Response Management and Information System (ERMIS) – A GIS based software to resolve the emergency recovery challenges in Madurai city,

Tamil Nadu B.Ganeshkumar, D.Ramesh

PSNA College of Engineering & Technology, Dindigul, Tamilnadu, India

[email protected]

ABSTRACT

Optimum utilization of the time after an accident which is golden hour serves as a

measure of effectiveness of any emergency response service provider system. Recovery actions

should be taken in time to reduce the loss of life and property. In spite of the reason that the

service providers are well equipped, routing problems and traffic congestions breaks their speedy

recovery action in real time. This paper presents a case study on Madurai which is the third

largest city in Tamil Nadu with 51.9 Km 2 and is also referred to as ‘City Never Sleeps’ because

of its busy life round the clock. In the recent years, it is transforming its status from ‘Athens of

the East’ to ‘Growing IT hub’ of southern Tamil Nadu, thanks to the development of IT sector in

this zone. Most of the emergency situations arise in the city due to road and fire accident in this

paper for which a detailed GIS database of transportation network, accident locations, hospitals,

ambulance locations, police and fire stations was prepared and Spatial Analysis was also carried

out for accident records of years 2004 – 2008 by using ArcGIS9.3 to map the accident risk zones.

ERMIS, a stand alone software free from GIS software backend was designed with all basic map

interaction functions in VB.NET platform with MapObjects2.4, which can able to answer all

kind of needs basically required for an emergency responder. A unique route finding OCX was

programmed and used to plot OD cost matrix from multiple origins to multiple destinations.

Route Finder was designed to find shortest, time saving routes and services areas. For effective

response ERMIS found to provide a greater support in giving information about the vicinity of

an emergency and solving directionfinding problems.

1. INTRODUCTION

Human resource is always of immense support for a developing country like India. Even

though our country is saturated with 110 Crore population, not many are overlooking the safer

mailto:[email protected]



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life of an individual. Transportation of a patient to hospital in emergency seems quite simple but

in actual it is pretty difficult during peak hours. A significant operation for the handling of

emergency incidents is the routing of responding vehicles to incident sites and then to the closest

appropriate hospitals. GIS technology can support emergency responders to provide efficient

response in quick response time through solving the steering problems.

2. STUDY AREA

The city Madurai, is located between 9° 53’ to 9° 59’ North latitudes and 78°4’ to 78°10’

East longitudes, lying at an altitude of 100.58 meters and it covers a spatial extent of 51.9 Km 2 .

In 2006, the city has a population of persons 10,74,149, with a growth rate of 10.05 percent

during the period of 2005 – 2006 with the density of 20,698 persons per sq.km. Ward wise

analysis of density pattern within the MMC limits indicates that the area within the

administrative jurisdiction of the MMC is almost saturated, with 52 wards of 72 wards having

high or very high density. The existing land use pattern of the city has 45.69 sq.km developed

area and 6.21 sq.km undeveloped area. According to the current land use, 8.29 sq.km of

developed area is dedicated to transportation next to residential. The existing road system

comprises NH7, NH45B & NH49, 7 Major District Roads and Other Roads, totaling up to a road

length of approximately 636.60 km within the Madurai Municipal Corporation limits. The city

has 22 major hospitals with trauma care facilities and a response network which is fully equipped

with 16 ambulances for emergency movement of road accident victims to hospitals and also

three Fire & Rescue Service stations are situated within the city. There are 16 Traffic Police

stations available which covers the city in 16 sectional areas.

3. AIM AND OBJECTIVES

The main aim of this study is to develop an efficient GIS based Emergency Response

Management and Information System, called ERMIS, for the improvement of emergency

recovery through solving the routing problems when a critical situation occurs on Madurai road

networks.

This work is done with the following objectives



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v To determine the existing emergency risk zones by employing a GIS analysis on the

history of fire and road accident records

v To develop a standalone software called ERMIS by using MapObjects and VB.NET

programming which is free from GIS software backend

v To locate the nearest emergency responder, such as an ambulance, hospital, fire & rescue

station or police station during an emergency occurs through ERMIS

v To suggest shortest route from emergency spot to the recovery point using network

analysis through a proposed OCX control

v To provide all the available information regarding emergency care situation through

ERMIS

4. DATA USED

The necessary data was collected from six different data sources as both spatial and nonspatial

data which are mentioned below.

From Survey of India

§ Toposheets Numbered 58 K/1/NW and 58 K/1/NE on 1:25,000 scales

§ Madurai Guide Map on scale 1: 20 000

From Corporation of Madurai

§ Ward Map on scale 1:20000

§ Recent Transportation Network Map on scale 1:7500

§ Year 2006 Population Data

§ Road Ledger 2006

§ Land Use Information

Station wise Fire Accident Records for the years 2004 to 2008

§ Anuppanadi Fire & Rescue Station

§ Madurai Fire & Rescue Station

§ Tallakulam Fire & Rescue Station

From Office of the Divisional Fire Officer, Madurai

§ Economical Statistics



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§ Fire & Rescue Station Locations

From Office of the Police Commissioner (Traffic), Madurai

§ Traffic Police Station Locations

§ Accident Records for the years 2004 to 2008

§ Route restrictions

From Field Visit (GPS Survey)

§ Locations of Ambulance Services

§ Locations of Hospitals

§ Information regarding Emergency Services

5. GIS DATABASE DESIGN

GIS database is prepared as with spatial and nonspatial data. Every accident spot is

specifically located at their exact geographic positions. In sum, 4535 road accident spots and

1046 fire accident spots are spotted with their attributes. Roads layer is digitized with more than

3016 road segments. The designed GIS database layers and their fields are

1. City Boundary (Area, Perimeter)

1. Ward Divisions (Ward No, Area, Males, Females, Total)

2. Roads (Name, OneWay, Speed limits, Length, Category)

3. Fire Accident Spots (Stn_ID, Stn_Name, Place, Distance, Date, Time, Amt Lost,

Amt Recovered)

4. Road Accidents (Stn_ID, Stn_Name, Place, Distance, Date, Time, Road Type,

Vehicle Type, Fatal_No, NonFatal_No)

5. Ambulance Services (ID, Name, Address, Contact, Category)

6. Hospitals (ID, Name, Address, Contact)

7. Fire & Rescue Stations (ID, Name, Address, Contact)

8. Police Stations (ID, Name, Address, Contact)

6. GIS ANALYSIS



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Time based and month based analysis were carried out to ascertain which time period and

month has more number of accident history. In time based analysis a whole day was divided into

six intervals with four hours gap. The month based study dealt with month wise occurrence of

accidents. From this the responder network may be get aware of prone time period or month.

Similarly different types of SQL queries were applied on accident related attributes to obtain the

results on the various topics. Spatial Analyst of ArcGIS is used to analyze density patterns using

simple or kernel calculations. Specifically, Kernel density type of calculation is applied to

prepare accident density maps. Roads in the city are categorized as NH, major roads and minor

roads. This is done by giving a separate key number to each category in the database. Roads

which are having names are identified and that data are stored in this database. Data base for

oneway, road segment length, speed limit and drive time was created. Road network was

generated by using Network Analyst Extension 1.1b of ArcView GIS 3.2a.

7. NEED OF ERMIS

Emergencies occur anywhere, at any location, at any time, and in various different ways,

will make one at risk. Emergency situations require a speedy response. Thus, it is undoubted to

establish direct, fast, and efficient software without delay. Hence, the development of emergency

response management and information system has its own value and necessity. The ERMIS is

known as software that supports the responders for quick and efficient emergency care during the

accidental emergency situation. GIS based Emergency Response Management and Information

System is proposed for trouble free routing of ambulances and fire vehicles during emergencies.

Visual Basic.NET provides a versatile platform, enabling programmers to use objectoriented

methodologies. MapObjects 2.4 is the mapping component software created by ESRI, to allow

mapping functions to be included in applications developed in a variety of programming

environments. ERMIS is developed under the platform of VB.NET with MO2.4. ERMIS is

designed as GUI which can handle by a user easily to obtain routing or ground truth information

of an emergency site.

7. 1 SOFTWARE OVERVIEW



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In this system the main issues are the shortest path, nearest ambulance, hospitals, fire &

rescue station, police station and storing the accident information in the database. ERMIS does

not require the user to be proficient in GIS techniques. It creates the displayed message of the

spatial data and allows these data elements to be combined without a user having knowledge of

the GIS software. Main screen of ERMIS is shown below. The main window has six parts (1.

Menu Bar, 2. Standard Toolbar 3. Map Toolbar, 4. Map Area, 5. Legend of Layers, 6. Taskbar)

with their own functional importance.

Figure 1: ERMIS V1.0.2 Main window

7. 2 MENU BAR & TOOL BARS

To make the ERMIS more userfriendly, menubars are added to user interface. Menu bar

contains different menus with common commands to perform different functionalities on spatial

data. ERMIS has two types of toolbars. The Standard toolbar has 15 buttons including five

control buttons and ten application buttons. Map toolbar has ten buttons including seven visual

map interaction controls, two querying controls and an output control. Menus, submenus and tool

bar functional descriptions are given in figure.



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Figure 2: Menu Bar, Tool Bars with their functionality description

Special Functionalities

• Labeling features

• Searching of facilities

• Extensive task bar guidance

• Scale and cursor position indicator

• JPEG map output

7. 3 APPLICATIONS

ERMIS was designed to supply information to the user to make proper decisions at the

time of emergencies. Applications part of ERMIS can be broadly classified into two sections.

One is to provide ground truth of locality; other is to determine a shortest efficient route within

city transportation network. ERMIS database has designed to carry wide range of information

including record of accidents and details of existing emergency services of the city. OLEDB of

VB.NET has used to access the database from the user side.

Accident Analysis



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Time based analysis reveals that the time interval 12 hrs to 15:59 hrs is most prone to fire

accidents in the years 2004 2008. In sum, 30% of accidents in 2004, 24% in 2005, 27% in

2006, 30% in 2007 and 26% in 2008 were happened in this specific interval of time. On

considering road accidents history, the time intervals 8 hrs to 11:59 hrs and 16 hrs to 19:59 hrs

carries most of the accidents. These two intervals bags 22% of accidents in 2004, 24% in 2005,

22% in 2006, 26% in 2007 and 21% in 2008. From month based analysis we can conclude that

the months January – March has the maximum fire accidents in all the years 2004 to 2008.

Nearly 33% accidents were occurred. Fire accidents have been classified in to Serious, Medium

and Small accidents by considering the amount lost. There were 19 serious, 73 medium and 954

small accidents happened in the years 2004 2008. Road accidents have been classified in to

Fatal and Non fatal accidents. In the year 2004, there were 524 fatal and 4011 non fatal

accidents occurred.

These results can be viewed through the Analysis Menu of ERMIS through following submenus

Time Based Analysis of Fire & Road Accidents, Month Based Analysis of Fire Accidents &

Road Accidents, Accident Type Statistics, Economical Impact of Fire Accidents, Accident

Density spots, Road Accidents Based on Vehicle Type, Accidents Based on Road Type, Fatal

and NonFatal Statistics, Density maps

Figure 3: Special application windows of ERMIS



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Risk Zones

Fire accident history recorded six places of frequent fire and had maximum economic

loss. These places can be called as fire prone risk zones. The risk zones are

1. Sellur

2. Tallakulam

3. Ottakadai

4. Chinakadai Street

5. Villapuram

6. East Anuppanadi

Road accident risk zones are predicted by keeping fatal accidents as important factor.

Highly accident prone areas are

1. Thevar Statue Junction

2. Kalavasal Junction

3. South Veli Street

4. Bypass – Kennet Road Junction

Figure 4: Fire and Road Accidents Risk Zones

Accident Records

Both fire and road accident records were stored in database. This Records Menu carries

the following information regarding Fire and Road accidents. These are Station Name, Place of

Accident, Distance from Station, Date of Accident, Time of Accident, Asset Lost in Fire accident,



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Asset Recovered in Fire accident, Road Type and Vehicle Type involved, Fatal and NonFatal

cases in Road Accidents

Services

This Services Menu gives the details of existing emergency responding facilitators of the

city. The user can able to choose a particular or an alternative service provider depending upon

the situation. Services menu comprises four emergency services viz., Ambulance services,

Hospitals, Fire & Rescue Stations and Police Stations. Hospitals submenu carries all the

essential information concerning the particular hospital. Location reference, contact numbers,

existing medical facilities, specialties and trauma care facility details will make the user to prefer

a precise choice.

7. 4 ROUTE FINDER

Route Finder is a specially designed application to enable the user to make route based

decisions easily. The basic action of this application is determined by the developed

Network.ocx control. Dijkstra’s algorithm one can easily find out the shortest path from a given

location (source) to all other points of interest (destination) in a graph /map. Here the other

version of Dijkstra’s Algorithm, which is called “All Shortest Path Algorithm" is used in the

programming of Network.ocx. Route Finder is a key to solve routing problems of Madurai city

through some easy steps.

Figure 5: Route Finder of ERMIS – Separate application for solving routing problems



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Route Finder has designed with eight separate components as shown in figure. Toolbar

comprises of six operational buttons and three interaction buttons. The operational part of Route

Finder has subdivided in to five categories namely Network activation, Attribute selection,

Location spotting, Action selection and Output generation.

A sample accident location is assumed approximately 3 Kms away from NHBypass

Junction i.e., Kaalavasal Junction. Closest ambulance location from the accident point and

closest hospital from the accident is obtained from Route Finder. Route view map and Directions

are the outputs of Route Finder. User can have a .JPEG format of map output with labels and a

detailed text of route directions. There will be separate maps to show ‘Closest Facility’ and

‘Shortest Path’. These two will assist emergency vehicle driver to solve routing problems. The

closest ambulance service is Meenakshi Ambulance. The distance to be traveled between these

two is 5.68 Kms. The closest hospital is Kennet Hospital. The shortest distance to be traveled to

reach the hospital is 5.24 Kms.

Figure 6: Results of Route Finder with Routing Directions

8 CONCLUSION



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Emergency Response Management and Information System (ERMIS) were designed in

the work by analyzing the ground situation of Madurai city. ERMIS is aimed to solve routing

problems effectively and it also provides shortest as well as efficient route for speedy

transportation of a patient when an accident or emergency occurs in Madurai city. Route map

and Directions output supply a substantial assistance to enable service providers to giving their

service at least time. ERMIS also analyzes emergency situations and emergency prone zones of

the city from the past years accident history. ERMIS is capable of handling multi accident

situation. It is analyzed with the results obtained that how well the developed Route Finder

working with the efficient accuracy as much as the Network Analyst1.1b of ArcView 3.2a.

Accident records database can be updated by the user side itself with the software. The whole

system was designed to with an easy updation functionality due to the requirements in future.

Traffic control authorities, emergency service providers, policemen and any common man can

use the system without any prior GIS software proficiency.

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