Aside from providing information to a wide range of audiences, has there been or is there a more direct way to make use of the many damage related maps/GIS that have been generated within the last few days to help in the ongoing response to the disaster brought by typhoon Haiyan to the Philippines?
I guess if it is being asked for it must be under use. Probably things will be clear at a later stage on how useful they were.
There is not easy answer to this. Image based damage mapping has been done for some 13 year already, and for hundreds of cases, and what we see is better maps (in terms of cartography), and more maps. After the 2010 Haiti earthquake more than 2000 damage-related maps were created by about a dozen international agencies (see http://www.earthzine.org/2011/03/23/remote-sensing-based-post-disaster-damage-mapping-%E2%80%93-ready-for-a-collaborative-approach/).
What we still don’t really understand well is who needs what type of map (and when), who can actually understand what type of damage map, what format would be good (it still is mostly pdf documents), and who in the past has actually found what type of map to be useful.
Hence a lot of effort is being made, but what the effect is questionable.
Haiyan is indeed a special case. A lot of map products relate to damage in more rural areas, information that is needed to understand logistics/accessibility issues. But dedicated research into the utility of damage maps still needs to be done.
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