京 都 大 学 防 災 研 究 所 年 報 第47号 C 平成16年3月
Annuals of Disas. Prev. Res. Inst., Kyoto Univ., No. 47 C, 2004

Building an Integrated Database Management System of Information on DisasterHazard, Risk, and Recovery Process

Hironori KAWAKATA, Yoshiaki KAWATA, Haruo HAYASHI,
Takeyoshi TANAKA, Kenneth C. Topping, Katsuya YAMORI,Paul YOSHITOMI*, Go URAKAWA*, and Tomohiro KUGAI** COE Researcher, DPRI, Kyoto University

Synopsis
Sharing of various information and data on forecast, prevention, communicationof information, history, revival process, etc. of disaster, is indispensable to the suitabletotal risk management about a disaster. However, in the present condition that disasterprevention study is not matured as an interdisciplinary field, there is almost no
cooperation of many fields relevant to disaster prevention, and the system that can beshared does not exist. Then, in this research, the integrated database system about thedisaster prevention to which immediate construction is expected is built.
Keywords: database; disaster; integration; Cross-Media Database; metadata, researchsupport information infrastructure

1. Introduction
Disaster reduction science is an interdisciplinary
field composed of lots of special subjects of study,
such as civil engineering, architecture, earth science,social science. If two identical natural phenomena
occurred, disasters and damages would appear in avariety of forms for the different site or the different
time. Also, if two different natural phenomena
occurred at the same site at the same time, disasters
and damages would appear in a variety of forms.
That is, the disaster and damage is controlled by
combination of various factors, such as regionalfeatures, social foundation, geographical andgeophysical features, and the physical mechanism of
the causal natural phenomena. Fig. 1 shows theoutline of disaster reduction science. Therefore, inorder to establish disaster reduction science as aninterdisciplinary field and to perform the suitabletotal risk management about a calamity, sharing ofvarious information, data, and research results of adisaster science, such as a forecast, prevention, acalamity history, a communication-of-information
system, and restoration and revival process, isindispensable, as well as disaster prevention scholars'
human communication. However, a researcher isoften difficult to use data and research results ofother field than his specialty, and is difficulty tounderstand them. If suitable explanations for themcannot be obtained, organic cooperation is barred andmisapprehension of meaning of data tends to lead thewrong results. Then, a new integrated databasesystem, one of a research support information
infrastructures, is needed that has a user interface
friendly for the researcher of various disaster sciencefields, and can store the data of various disasterscience fields saved on various formats/media. In thisproject, we are trying to construct a new integrated
database system (Cross-Media Database) that can
respond to the needs of the various field of disasterprevention study. This paper explains the outline of
the specification of this database system obtained byprobing the problem of the conventional database.
The details about the system design and construction,and the application studies using this system aredescribed by Kugai et al. (2004) and Urakawa et al.
(2004), respectively.
Fig. 1. The outline of correlation between thespecified studies for disaster reduction systems.
2. Conventional Database

HazardUnderstandings

Understandings ofSocial Vulnerability

DamageEstimation

Hard Measure forDisaster Reduction

Soft Measure forDisaster Reduction

In the disaster science field, there are lots ofdatabase systems for various data. The naturaldisaster related bibliography information database"SAIGAI"(http://maple.dpri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/saigai/)has been employed at the Disaster Prevention
Research Institute, Kyoto University. One can search
natural disaster related articles using this web sitewith full-text type search. The database system for
DPRI annuals (http://www.dpri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/web_j/index_annuals.html) has also been employed at theDisaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto
University (Matsuura et al., 2004). One can searchand see articles in DPRI annuals using this web sitewith full-text type search or category search, such as
authors’ name, published year, title of article. Thisdatabase system can provide the category search
since the data themselves are recorded in a definedmanner. The strong-motion seismograms database,“Kyoshin Net (K-NET)”, has been employed at
National Research Institute for Earth Science andDisaster Prevention (http://www.k-net.bosai.go.jp/knet/). This database system has text catalogues ofearthquakes, seismic stations, and so on, since it has
the data other than character data. Then, one canobtain seismograms he wants using the catalogues.
As above examples, most of conventional databasesystems have been developed for digital data
recorded on a couple of original formats. Hence, thenumber of required databases will be almost the sameas that of the data formats, and the cooperation
between different types of databases will be hard to
be constructed. Then, even if an article of DPRI
annual that describes the analysis using seismogramsfrom K-net is recorded on SAIGAI, it is hard todescribe a relationship among the three databases.
This may require a complicated procedure for bothan administrator and a user as a result, in thisinterdisciplinary field where there exist various datatypes on various formats.
On the other hand, the ring server that someresearch organizations are developing is mentioned
as a system that can store various type of digital data
(ftp://aist.ring.gr.jp/pub/). This kind of system is also
holding the problem since each data does not have its
metadata (data for data), instead of few restrictions
for data types. If a user does not have information forthe data a priori, he cannot know what the data isuntil he opens it.
Google image search (http://www.google.co.jp/imghp?tab=wi&q=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=ja&lr=) is another type of database system for digital
images. One can find the images he wants throughthumbnails. However, it is hard to find thumbnails,
since there are no search keywords other than their
file names for digital images on the web.
In disaster science field, as well as most of otherresearch fields, there are no research support
information infrastructures that can provide userfriendly interface for efficiently searching lots oftypes of data. U.S. Redlands Institute proposed thesimple and user-friendly database system, which
stores the metadata to each data on a unified format
that has data for the data, and also stored therelationships between metadata. This has beendeveloped for storing all data produced in a project.
As for disaster science, a number of databases
designed for some specified types of data, such as
above-mentioned K-net, have already beendeveloped. In MEXT 21st Century COE Program forDPRI, Kyoto University, we are developing aspecified database for the video archives of lecture
series, which is described in the next section. Then, adatabase that can work in cooperation with otherspecified databases is required. In this project, theCross-Media Database System as research support
information infrastructure is developed under atechnical support of U.S. Redlands Institute.
3. Database System for Video Archives of DPRI
Forum in 21st Century COE Program
In MEXT 21st Century COE Program, DPRI
provides the lecture series “DPRI-KU Forum” atKyoto satellite office (four times a week) and Tokyo
satellite office (twice a month) (Hashimoto et al.,2003). Anyone can request to attend all lectures
through the Internet website. However, ones living
far away from the satellite offices and ones that areon duty during the lecture period are hard to attend
the lectures. Then, all lectures are recorded withdigital video cameras to make video archives oflecture series, and we have a plan to construct an ondemand streaming distribution system of theselectures. The digital videos are encoded to windows
media video (wmv) format, and the indexes of themare added to divide a lecture into several chapters ofsome minutes. The distribution system is designed sothat one can choose and watch some chapters of alecture he wants. This system is one of the specified
databases that the Cross-Media Database should
work in cooperation with each other. We place thissystem as a pilot project of Cross-Media Database’spartner. We prepare the same metadata elements for
all wmv files of forum lectures as those for video
data in Cross-Media Database, whose details aredescribed in the next section and Kugai et al. (2004).
4. Cross-Media DatabaseCross-Media Database is designed so that 12
types of data (audio, video, document, image, person,organization, study, model, data, event, Internet, andgeospatial) can be stored in (Kugai et al., 2004).
These various data usually have derivative
correlation with one another. Figure 2 shows anexample of such correlation. In order to provide an
efficient search engine and display the search results
and their related data in a unified format, theappropriate description of metadata, relationship, andcontrolled vocabularies are essential.
Metadata describe what the data are. Metadata
elements are classified into common elements thatare independent of data type, and attributes that
depend on data type. Attributes of each data type aredescribed in Kugai et al. (2004). Common elementscompose of Resource ID Number, Media Type,

Keywords: X ,Y

Format Type, Content Type, Language Type, PublicMetadata, Public Abstract, Public Resource, Abstract,Name, Usage Constraint, Relationship Type,Keyword, Date, Foot Print, Contact.
Relationship describes the correlation between
two or more data as shown in Fig. 2. For example,
when a person D writes an article A and gives alecture I, his name may be found both in an author
field and an lecturer field on some conventional
databases owing to lack of the definition ofrelationship. In the Cross-Media Database, a person
D is a datum itself, and relationships are defined
between a person D and data such as an article A, alecture I, his affiliation, and so on. Hence, one canrun a derivative search and find related data using
clickable links that are built using the relationships.
Controlled vocabulary is useful to avoid theambiguity of notation and improve the searchefficiency. It is also important to make a thesaurus
for disaster science using the controlled vocabularies,
which enables us to construct a user-friendlier
database system. This is one of our ongoing tasks,and requires cooperation of a number of specialists infields of interdisciplinary disaster science.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the Japanese
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science andTechnology (MEXT) 21st Century COE Program forDPRI, Kyoto University (No.14219301, Program
Leader: Prof. Yoshiaki Kawata).

Coverage and Accuracy of G

WordDocument

Database that H are stored inArticles including X , Y: A,B,C
Document

Authors of A: D,E,F

Data used in B : G,H

PersonLectureLecturebybyD:EIInternet

Vector, Luster

Affiliation of F

Event （→Audio, Video）

Organization

Fig. 2. An example of derivative correlation with various types of data from some keywords.
References
Hashimoto, M., Hayashi, H., Kawakata, H., Kawata,Y., Irikura, K. and Ikebuchi, S. (2003): The DPRI-KU Satellite Office for Outreach Supported by the
21st Century Center of Excellence Program, Proc.
The 23rd General Assembly of the International
Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, Vol. B, pp. 513.

Kugai, T., Kawata, Y. and Hayashi, H. (2004):
Development of Cross-Media Database for Sharing
Disaster Information, Annuals of DisasterPrevention Research Institute, Kyoto University,this volume.
Matsuura, H., Tatsumi, K., Tagawa, H., Yoshida, Y.,
Miura, T., Takayama, T., Wada, H. and Hirano, N.
(2004): Digitization of Disaster Prevention Printed
Matters and Video Information, and Construction ofthe Search Engine which can Search These on theInternet Website at High Speed, Annuals ofDisaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto
University, this volume.
Urakawa, G., Yoshitomi, N., Kugai, T., Kawakata,H., Topping, K.C. and Hayashi, H. (2004):
Development of Cross-Media Database for Sharing
Disaster Information and a Case Study about
Implementation Process, Annuals of Disaster
Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University,
this volume.

要 旨
災害に関する適切なトータルリスクマネージメントには，災害の予知・予防・情報伝達・災害履歴・災害復興過程などの様々な情報，データの共有が不可欠である．しかしながら，防災学が学際分野として未整備な現状において，こうした防災に関連する諸分野の連携はほとんどなく，共有できるようなシステムは存在しない．そこで，本研究では早急な構築が期待される防災に関する統合型データベース・システムの構築をおこなっている．
キーワード: データベース，防災，統合，クロスメディア・データベース，メタデータ，
研究支援情報基盤