GIS Data for the Tohoku Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

We all know what happened late last week in northeastern Japan.  There have been a tremendous amount of causalities and people have lost everything.  A number of agencies are predicting that this event could be the most costly in history, and we all know that it will take many years for this region and country to recover.

It is also during times like these that geospatial professionals are called upon provide any number of spatial services.  Now the hard part.  Where is the data?  How do we get to it and make sense of it?  A number of data sources are becoming available, many at a high resolution or very current.  These critical datasets are being generated using a number of different technologies, from satellite imagery to social networking, providing relevant information on-the-fly.  It is really amazing to see this information become available so quickly after such a colossal event.

The following websites provide just a glimpse into the amount of data that is becoming available.  By no means is this list complete or authoritative.

• NASA has posted a number of different images on their Earth Observatory website.
• The German Aerospace Center has released data in regards to the extent of the tsunami along Japan’s east coast.
• The Harvard Center for Geospatial Analysis created a Japan Sendai Earthquake Data Portal for people to share related data.
• The Japan Meteorological Society has posted information about wave heights and maximum tsunami observations.
• Esri has developed a web mapping application that reads in various social networking feeds and You Tube videos while meshing it with data from the USGS.
• Google, along with Digital Globe and Geoeye, have posted a number of high resolution images that are available in Google Earth and Google Maps
• The United States Geological Survey has posted a vast amount of information about the earthquake, including earthquake intensity data.
• NOAA and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center have published a number of datasets relating to the tsunami.
• Geocommons users have started to post a number of datasets, and are creating maps.
• Dataset are becoming available through the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan.
• Tidal data from the event has been available from the Japan Meteorological Agency
• The Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System is providing a number of datasets for both the tsunami and the earthquake.
  
• And…the Army Geospatial Center has collected a number of very current ASTER and LANDSAT images of the region.

These sites are just scratching the surface.  I know there are a ton I didn’t list.  If you know of any please leave them in the comments section.  I’m sure someone will find it useful.