| Title | Flood damage calculations via a RESTful API |
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| Author | McGrath, H ;
Kotsollaris, M; Stefanakis, E; Nastev, M |
| Source | International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction vol. 35, 101071, 2019 p. 1-8, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2019.101071  Open Access |
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| Year | 2019 |
| Alt Series | Natural Resources Canada, Contribution Series 20180297 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV |
| Document | serial |
| Lang. | English |
| Media | paper; on-line; digital |
| File format | pdf (Adobe® Reader®); html |
| Subjects | hydrogeology; floods; software; RESTful API; Hazus; Methodology; Risk assessment; Public safety; Decision making; Buildings |
| Illustrations | tables; flow diagrams; screen captures; schematic representations; location maps; geoscientific sketch maps; plots |
| Program | Public Safety Geoscience Quantitative risk assessment project |
| Released | 2019 01 26 |
| Abstract | In Canada and across the globe, flooding has significantly increased in recent decades. Knowledge of the flood hazard alone (extent and frequency) does not provide enough information to the public
safety community to make informed decisions regarding potential social and economic losses. While many programs have been developed for flood risk assessment, they require experienced personnel to prepare the data inputs, run and analyse the model
outputs. As such, alternative, easy-to-use tools for risk assessment are appealing. We present in this paper a RESTful Application Program Interface (API) for building damage estimation. This API is a web-service which allows access to buildings
damage calculations outside of a risk assessment program. It is designed to provide a point of entry for developers to programmatically access the underlying calculation tools to query, calculate and extract damage data directly into a users own
software, tools or decision support systems. To validate the accuracy of results the damage data is compared to results from existing software for two communities in Eastern Canada. To illustrate the ease of use of the API, a Python script has been
written which reads in a file containing the building information and pre-determined flood depths. This script builds the request for the API and saves the results: damage and exposure. |
| Summary | (Plain Language Summary, not published)
Direct losses occur as a result of direct physical contact of flood water and include loss calculations of building repair and construction costs.
Typically, these calculations are only available within flood risk assessment software. In this reserach, a web-based RESTful API was created to allow users to compute damages by accessing a web-URL. This API can be accessed by users or via 3rd party
programs which can easily be incorporated into a users own software, tools or decision support systems. |
| GEOSCAN ID | 313101 |
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