Disaster Advances
12 (1) January (2019)
Study of Volunteering Geographic Information enabled
response to Livestock Disaster
Jee Hee Koo1, Ji Yeon Ahn3, Dong Min Lee2 and Sang Rak Lee3*
1. Department of Technology Fusion Engineering, Konkuk University, 120 Neungdong-ro, Gwanjin-gu, Seoul, 05029, KOREA
2. Harangi Corporation, O1-217,88, Doanbuk-ro, Seo-gu, Daejeon, KOREA
3. Department of Animal Science and Technology, Konkuk University, 120 Neungdong-ro, Gwanjin-gu, Seoul, 05029, KOREA
*leesr@konkuk.ac.kr
Abstract
The outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease made a huge
damage to Korea in 2010 and it was serious enough to
be declared as a national disaster. Highly infectious
diseases like foot and mouth disease tend to cause
nationwide damage. For this reason, it is important to
detect it early at the farm, but it is more important to
quickly respond to the disease by regularly monitoring
the activity of livestock animals to detect if they show
any abnormal symptoms and share such data through
community mapping since the disease often spread via
veterinarians or feed carrying vehicles.
Therefore, this study aimed to develop a cattle activity
monitoring system by utilizing ubiquitous ICT and
suggest community mapping items necessary for each
stakeholder such as farmers, veterinarians and the
government to facilitate their response to the outbreak
of infectious diseases. The cattle activity monitoring
system and community mapping are expected to
contribute to supporting rapid initial response and
preventing the outbreak of infectious disease from
becoming a nationwide disaster.
Keywords: Korean cattle, ICT, activity monitoring,
community mapping, disaster, infectious disease.
Introduction
Disaster is defined in various ways. It is said that disaster
needs to be interpreted in terms of cultural, social and
international relation changes9. Disaster needs to be
continuously reinterpreted since its concept relies on
perception of what is important in disaster sites and issues of
the times10. From this perspective, the outbreak of foot and
mouth disease started in Andong in 2010 changed to some
extent in defining and categorizing disaster. Livestock
industry in Korea is likely to experience great economic
damage even by a single foot and mouth disease. For
instance, the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in 2010 led
to the government’s declaration of a national disaster within
one month.
The word ‘disaster’ originated from Lain. It means the
unfavorable aspect of a star which can be interpreted as the
uncontrollable divine punishment3. In this sense, disaster
referred to natural disasters and their consequences such as
earthquakes, typhoons and floods in the past. However
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today, even scholars use disaster as well as calamity, crisis
and risks together as overall environment has changed
following economic development and social diversity.
Webster’s dictionary defines crisis as the turning point for
determining if the issue is an unstable state requiring urgent
need for critical change or if a single incident or the course
of action is continued, modified, or terminated. Moreover,
disaster is defined as the undesirable accident or incident that
occurs in a specific region with technical uncertainty and
causes enormous physical or social damage beyond the
scope of local communities.
Disaster includes natural disasters and social disasters.
Social disasters happen following the changes in social
environment such as careless or intentional technical
problems and paralysis of national infrastructure. Disaster
caused by the spread of infectious disease is also included in
this category. The government ever declared the outbreak of
foot and mouth disease as a national disaster in 2010.
Statistics said around 3.45 million livestock including
115,000 cattle, 3.3 million pigs and 37,000 milk cows were
stamped out and buried.
The 2010-2011 foot and mouth disease outbreak were
unprecedented event in its scope and impact in Korea. It was
not merely an animal disease, but turned into a national
disaster, triggering a lot of controversies over poor initial
countermeasure by the government, disputes about causes,
problems of stamping-out policy, problems of concentrated
animal feeding, human victims resulting from immoderate
stamping-out process and possibility of environment
pollution and epidemic in relation to full-scale burial.
Diseases such as foot and mouth disease and avian influenza
(AI) are highly infectious so that it causes extensive damage
to livestock farmers and the country. Foot and mouth disease
is the most dangerous domestic animal infectious disease
that often occurs in a hoofed and even-toed mammal (cattle,
pig, sheep, goat, deer etc.). Foot and mouth disease virus
spreads very fast by direct transmission via the affected
animal’s blister fluid, saliva, milk, sperm, breathing air and
feces by indirect transmission via humans (herdsmen,
veterinarians, insemination technicians etc.), vehicles (feed
carrying trucks, shipping trucks, milk collecting trucks etc.),
clothes, water, feed and equipment, by air-borne
transmission and by livestock products such as the affected
meat and its by-products1,6.
Therefore, it is very important to early detect the disease, but
 Disaster Advances
it is unpractical in the farming site because farmers have to
notice that animals are infected through apparent symptoms.
It makes it difficult to timely detect the outbreak and
veterinarians travelling between farms often act as a
transmitting agent of the disease. That’s why it is considered
as a man-made disaster.
Today, connection between humans and humans, objects and
objects and humans and objects is possible since the society
can be widely networked as ICT has rapidly evolved and
mobile devices have been popularized5. ICT can not only
enable the real-time meeting of livestock, farmers and local
or center government employees, but can also control the
overall environment necessary for livestock7 and offer a
forum for sharing data by collective intelligence using
volunteered geographic information (VGI) which is
geographic data provided voluntarily by users.
This study aimed to develop a cattle activity monitoring
system by utilizing ubiquitous ICT and suggest community
mapping items necessary for each stakeholder such as
farmers, veterinarians and the government to facilitate their
response to the outbreak of infectious diseases. The cattle
activity monitoring system and community mapping are
expected to contribute to supporting rapid initial response
and preventing the outbreak of infectious disease from
becoming a national disaster.
Trends of Volunteered Geographic Information
Volunteered Geographic Information: Volunteered
Geographic Information (VGI) generally refers to the
activity and its resulting geographic data of developing tools
for creating, combining and disseminating geographic data
collected voluntarily by many individuals or operating
related organizations2.
VGI-enabled cases include OpenStreet Map, WikiMapia and
Google Map Marker. The VGI development case is OSGeo4.
The rapid and widespread dissemination of smartphones
increases the use of a mobile internet connection. Geotag
photos taken by smartphone cameras can be easily uploaded
onto SNS such as Twitter and Facebook by touching several
times, changing the way users participate in making a map.
It emphasizes the easy way for users to upload geographic
data (VGI), calling it as community mapping or cloud
mapping.
VGI is very useful in disasters requiring the government to
make split-second decisions, for instance, earthquake in
Haiti, Haifa fire in Israel (2010) and Flooding in Vermont of
the United States (2011).
VGI is rapidly proliferating as user generated content (UGC)
is widespread on the Internet. While the government
reluctantly open geographic data it owned, VGI is creeping
fast into daily life as substitute for public geographic data.
Global companies including Google Earth sought for
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solution to co-exist and cooperate with VGI. ESRI of the
United States developed their geoportal service products
used to search for geographic data as VGI and distribute
them for free.
Volunteered Geographic Information for Disaster
Response: Google Crisis Response Team provided VGI to
help citizens escape to a safe area and government agencies
and NGO to effectively respond to disasters when
earthquakes in Haiti and New Zealand (2010), Haifa fire in
Israel (2010) and Flooding in Vermont of the United States
(2011) occurred. The team obtained satellite photos of the
affected areas from Google’s partners, GeoEye and Digital
Globe and opened them to the public. The real-time disaster
information input by users using Google Map Maker were
shared by government agencies, NGO and IT providers.
Since then, volunteered disaster map is on service
(www.google.org/crisisresponse).
When earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, crisis mapping was
quickly implemented which transforms VGI into crisis data
for saving a life and supporting damage restoration. A open
source-based web service platform called “Ushahidi” was
used as generic technology to quickly convert crisis data
about Haiti earthquake into geographic information. The
Ushahidi Platform promptly obtains crisis information with
location information referenced from citizens in the disaster
relief sites through various channels such as SMS (short
message service), e-mail and web browser and supports the
results to be immediately reflected onto WMS (Web Map
Service). In this way, it provides collaboration support
technology that allows for producing, collecting and sharing
information regarding rescue activities and damage made on
the scene of the disaster in real time.
Volunteered Geographic Information for Epidemic
Response: In Korea, VGI was used in May and June, 2015
when MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) inflicted
on Korea. Despite the outbreak of the deadly epidemic, the
government declared not to open information about hospitals
affected by MERS, not only making people feel insecure, but
also driving the public into fear and anxiety. Citizens finally
created MERS maps based on voluntarily-provided data and
media reports and shared them with one another. As shown
in figure 1, the MERS Map presents the location and scope
of MERS-confirmed patients and the location of MERS
screening clinics on the map.
Local Government’s volunteered Geographic
Information: There are VGI application cases by local
governments. Figure 2 shows ‘map tagging’ service
provided by the Seoul Metropolitan Government called
‘Smart Seoul Map,’ which is a free app for Seoul map
tagging that offers administrative data of Seoul as
geographic information. The Smart Seoul Map app presents
detailed map data including location of harmful facilities for
youth, points requiring safety inspection, places and
elements inconvenient for the movement of the physically
 Disaster Advances Vol. 12 (1) January (2019)

disabled and places requiring facility repair. Importantly,
these data are surveyed and tagged on the map directly by
users. Many local governments and agencies create
community mapping with various themes to enhance data
sharing and communication with residents. This app is not
designed for a one-off event. It prevents indiscrimination
uploading of unrefined data while utilizing the unique
characteristics of community mapping.
In particular, the public theme menu is created for
developing and providing selected contents while the
participation theme menu is designed for anyone to upload
their theme of interest and expand the contents by sharing
information and communication with others, which is the
characteristic of community mapping. It not only allows
both a few public officials in charge of geographic
information and many other administrative officials to act as
a producer of geographic information, but also helps
citizens, businesses and organizations easily access various
information of administrative information produced and
uploaded directly by the government.

Figure 1: Data map of MERS screening clinics

Figure 2: Screen of Seoul Map Tagging Service (http://map.seoul.go.kr)

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Volunteered Geographic Information-enabled
Response to Livestock Disaster
Cattle Activity Monitoring System: The cattle activity
monitoring system is designed to examine cattle by using a
smartphone for a brief interview of farmers without the need
of veterinarian’s visit. Veterinarian’s travel from farm to
farm is suspected to increase the possibility of spreading
infectious disease at the beginning. This problem will be
resolved by this monitoring system as farmers can examine
their domestic animals in the early stage of disease by
themselves using the monitoring system. Figure 3 shows a
concept map of cattle activity monitoring system.
Functions of Cattle Activity Monitoring System: The
basic functions of cattle activity monitoring system include
individual livestock management (figure 4), farm
management (figure 5) and pen management. Data of
individual livestock is entered and can be modified. Basic
information of each farm and pen are entered and can be
modified.
Basically, after entering data of individual livestock
management, farm management and pen management,
sensors installed around the farm can be managed as shown
in figure 6. Based on the data, the activity of cattle can be
monitored as shown in figure 7. After monitoring cattle
activity, users can set the thresholds and an alarm to be
alerted if any action beyond the thresholds is shown (figure
8).

Figure 3: Concept Map of Cattle Activity Monitoring System

Figure 4: Screen of individual livestock management

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Figure 5: Screen of farm management

Figure 6: Screen of sensor node management

Figure 7: Screen of cattle activity monitoring

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Community Mapping Activity Items for Response to
Livestock Disaster: The cattle activity monitoring system is
designed to identify the health condition of cattle in each
farm. In ordinary days, this system is used to check cattle’s
health condition and identify any symptoms of disease and
estrous signs to support farmers to respond to any event in
time.
This system needs to be used to monitor livestock and if
disease outbreaks, prevent it from spreading by quickly
sharing information on the disease using community
mapping. To this end, each stakeholder has to perform the
community mapping activities as shown in table 1. Using
this monitoring system, farmers can manage their livestock
in ordinary days and provide the farm’s basic data and the
affected livestock’s data if disease outbreak happens to allow
nearby farms to quickly obtain relevant information and
respond to it.
Veterinarians can identify the health condition of livestock
before visiting each farm and quickly take measures to block
the path of movement in advance. The government can also
quickly identify the outbreak of disease in each region’s
farms to establish appropriate policies.

Figure 8: Screen of alarm setting

Table 1
Community mapping activity items by stakeholders
Stakeholders Purpose Activity Items System Usage
Farm’s name &
Farm overview
address
Pen management Pen ID Farmers use the system to
Livestock ID, sex, manage individual livestock
Manage individual Livestock
species, birth date, they owned and quickly
Farmers livestock in each management
registration date obtain information if
farm
Livestock’s Date, characteristics, disease outbreaks in the
characteristics activity nearby farm.
Weather, temperature,
Weather Info.
humidity
Livestock ID, body Veterinarians use the system
temperature, to quickly determine if a
Identify the status of symptoms, farm’s livestock get a
Livestock disease
Veterinarians livestock in each determination of disease and if confirmed
management
farm disease prevent the spread of
disease by blocking the path
of movement early on.
Farm’s name, the The government uses this
Identify the outbreak
Livestock disease number of affected system to quickly identify
Government of disease in each
outbreak management individual cattle the outbreak of disease and
region’s farms
establish policy.

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Conclusion
In 2010, a lot of livestock were stamped out due to the
outbreak of foot and mouth disease, giving an opportunity to
recognize the outbreak of infectious disease in livestock to
become a disaster and start studies to develop systems to
prevent such disaster.
As interest in ubiquitous technology is rising; efforts to apply
USN technology to various areas including the livestock
industry are made. USN technology involves attaching
sensor nodes onto an object which automatically collects the
object’ data and its surrounding environment information
using electronic waves and delivering them to based nodes.
This study developed a cattle activity monitoring system
using ubiquitous technology in order to monitor the health
condition of livestock and suggested community mapping
items necessary for each stakeholder to facilitate their
response to the outbreak of infectious diseases by looking at
the activity of livestock to identify their health, early
determine the situation to provide necessary information via
community mapping and quickly develop countermeasures
and policies. This community mapping will help the owner
of the affected farm, veterinarians and nearby farmers
rapidly acquire information and the government quickly
respond to keep the disease from spreading.
As ICT is used to automatically control the environment for
livestock, check the health condition of livestock by
monitoring their activity and allow farmers to efficiently
manage the health of domestic animals. Thanks to an alarm
system that will give an alert if abnormal signs are present,
the competitiveness of livestock industry will be
significantly improved. Consequently, adopting Korea’s
advanced technologies will further enhance the
sustainability of Korean livestock industry.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by Korea Institute of Planning and
Evaluation for Technology in Food, Agriculture, Forestry
and Fisheries (IPET) through Advanced Production
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Vol. 12 (1) January (2019)
Technology Development Program, funded by Ministry of
Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) (116056-03).
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(Received 10th November 2018, accepted 19th December
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