Broadly speaking maps used to tackle earthquake issues are of different types:
- Scientific maps: scientific description of the geological structure and seismic details (type of geology, faults, peak ground acceleration zones, hazard maps, macroseismic maps showing impacts of past earthquakes, land morphology, etc.);
- Emergency maps: describing the affected areas, the elements at risk, the escape ways, etc.;
- Land planning maps: describing usages and policies that have to be given to the different land areas;
- Risks and resources community-made maps: elaborated by local communities (schools, organizations) in order to acquire and spread the knowledge of the area, the awareness of the associated risks and of the existing resources (civil protection forces, meeting areas, safe sites, etc.).
In general these different types of maps are available from:
- Local authorities: Municipality, Prefectures, Civil Protection.
- Universities, science centres and seismic institutes/observatories.
- Local citizen organizations.
Information restrictions:
In some cases the access to some of the themes covered by emergency maps can be restricted as some of the information (such as locations of banks, large strategic infrastructure, military sites, insurance, industry, etc. …) has to be managed only by authorities and operational structures in case of crisis.
