This is a bugfix release. The following changes were made:

• Added Tanzanian minimum needs file
• Fix: Show building aggregation in volcanic ash impact function (#2105)
• Fix: Totals of affected buildings in aggregation regions now calculated correctly (#2144)
• Fix: Show building aggregation in volcano impact functions (#2103 #2104)
• Fix: Prevent hazard attribute names from masking exposure names during interpolation (#2090)

This is a bug fix release. The following changes were made:

• Fix: Issue parsing minimum needs – see #2132
• Fix: Error in Keywords creation wizard for flood raster layer (using meters as unit) #2111
• Fix: Error when open Set InaSAFE Analysis Area #2045

This is a bugfix release – it fixes an issue with resizing of the minimum needs configuration dialog.

We are pleased to announce the availability of InaSAFE 3.1.0. This release includes a huge amount of polishing and cleaning in the InaSAFE code base. Many of these improvements are not things that you will immediately notice in the user interface, but rather represent incremental refinements to the software. There have been over 725 changes made in the code since 3.0 was released. The most fundamental change has been the implementation of a new architecture for impact functions. We have added two new impact functions and polished the user interface in various places. In particular the OSM downloader has been improved to give better feedback during downloads and to provide more flexible options. Read on in our change log below to see the highlights of this release!

For more information on how to participate in the InaSAFE project, please contact us at info@inasafe.org – and visit our home page at https://inasafe.org. We would like to thank all the developers, funders, stakeholders and interested people for the great contributions they have made to InaSAFE thus far!

Key changes:

Unicode support

InaSAFE 3.1 is now Unicode compliant. That means that if you have accented / special characters in your file names, InaSAFE should deal with them gracefully instead of raising an error when you try to use them.

Improvements to Impact Functions that deal with polygon hazards and raster exposure

All impact functions that work on polygon hazard and raster exposure will return the raster exposure. These are:

• Classified Polygon on Population
• Volcano Point on Population
• Volcano Polygon on Population
• Flood Polygon on Population

The impact layer will return the population layer with some modifications:

For Classified Polygon on Population, Volcano Point/Polygon on Population, the impact layer grids values will follow this rule: If the grid covered by polygon, the grid will be assigned the pops grid value. If it’s not covered, the grid will be assigned no data value (see interpolate_polygon_on_raster)

For Flood Polygon on Population, the impact layer grids values will follow this rule: If the grid covered by polygon AND match the parameters (value in the affected field == affected value), the grid will be assigned the source population grid. If it’s not covered, the grid will be assigned no data value. If it doesn’t match the criteria in the parameter, it will be assigned 0

Support for setting the analysis extents from a QGIS bookmark

You can now set the analysis extents using a QGIS bookmark. This makes it easy to create a collection of well defined, named analysis areas and then run impact assessments on them as needed.

Saving a layer now also saves layer keywords to the destination

In previous versions of InaSAFE, if you used the QGIS ‘save as’ feature on an impact layer, the keywords and other associated files were not transferred. In InaSAFE 3.1 these files are now correctly transferred to the new destination, ensuring that when you create copies of your data, their metadata are propagated too.

Note: You need version 2.8 or better of QGIS in order for this feature to work.

Option to specify where impact results are saved

You can now specify a directory that will be used when saving analysis results. In previous versions it was not obvious where InaSAFE would save its output data. Now you can provide a directory explicitly so that you can easily find your analysis results again in the future.

Improved menu layout

We have improved the menu layout so that items listed are more logically consistent using this logic:

• first items relating to setup of the analysis environment
• then items relating to performing the analysis
• then items relating to downloading and transforming datasets
• then items relating to post-processing and analysis replication

OSM Downloader can now use user defined extents

Now when you download data using the OSM Downloader tool, you can specify the extents of the data to be downloaded, either by entering specific coordinates, or by dragging a rectangle on the map canvas in QGIS. You can also now specify if you want the downloader to overwrite existing files, or to save the downloaded files with a unique filename on each download.

Support for downloading building point data

The OSM Downloader tool can now download buildings as points (based on point-on-surface centroids). This makes it easy to use InaSAFE for doing hazard on point analyses such as flood on building points, earthquake on buildings points etc.

Improvements to OSM Downloader progress feedback

The OSM downloader now gives more useful progress feedback, showing the elapsed and total download sizes in megabytes.

We are pleased to announce the availability of InaSAFE 3.0.0. This is a major new release. The 3.0 designation is because we have made major changes to the underlying code architecture which will break existing applications that used the 2.x InaSAFE API. We have also added new features and tools to make the process of contingency planning more efficient and configurable.

For more information on how to participate in the InaSAFE project, please contact us at info@inasafe.org – and visit our home page at https://inasafe.org. We would like to thank all the developers, funders, stakeholders and interested people for the great contributions they have made to InaSAFE thus far!

Key changes:

Impact summary reporting improvements

The impact summary table that accompanies the graphical report created by InaSAFE has been updated so that the output matches the styling of the rest of InaSAFE and is much more pleasing and easy to read.

New wizard for carrying out impact assessments
Our new wizard has the following goal: providing a guided, logical path through the process of carrying out an impact assessment. The new impact function centric wizard presents a series of questions in a very easy to use manner that will step you through the process of carrying out your assessment. Rather than requiring the user to first load their data and then discover which kinds of assessments can be carried out (as the prior versions of InaSAFE only supported), the new wizard lets the user first select what kind of analysis they would like to carry out and then lets them select the data from the set of layers that are currently open in QGIS, or by loading a layer from the file system via a user friendly data browser interface.

Code

This is the main reason for the 3.0.0 desigation – we have done a major overhaul of the code, merging the safe and safe_qgis packages and allowing the use of Qt4 and QGIS API calls throughout the codebase.

This is a minor bugfix release which corrects a problem in the QGIS plugin manager that was caused by our designation of the maximum QGIS allowable version of 2.99.999 – we updated this to 2.99 in this bugfix release.

• Bug fix: Make legend work with QGIS 2.6, removes requirement to use QGIS 2.4
• Bug fix: Fixed issue with batch runner not working properly

Note: This release is now compatible with QGIS 2.6

We are pleased to announce the availability of InaSAFE 2.2. This is a feature release, adding a number of new features and tools to make the process of contingency planning more efficient and configurable. For more information on how to participate in the InaSAFE project, please contact us at info@inasafe.org – and visit our home page at inasafe.org. We would like to thank all the developers, funders, stakeholders and interested people for the great contributions they have made to InaSAFE thus far! The image on the right (click for a larger view) features participants at the InaSAFE workshop held in Jakarta over the period 22 September – 30 September 2014.

Important note: InaSAFE 2.2 does not support QGIS 2.6. Please ensure you have QGIS 2.4 in order to be able to download and use this plugin. This is addressed in the 2.2.3 Bugfix release above.

Preliminary support for ISO19115 metadata

Until version 2.2 of InaSAFE, our (keywords system)[/en/user-docs/application-help/keywords.html] has relied on a simple text file format for representing the various properties about GIS layers – for example whether they are hazard, exposure or impact layers. As of InaSAFE 2.2 we will be shifting towards using the industry standard ISO19115 file format in order to facilitate data interchange with other GIS users.

For technical users, note that keywords will be represented in the gmd:supplementalInformation element of the ISO19115 document and still adhere to our key : value pair format within the CDATA block as per the example below.

<gmd:supplementalInformation> <inasafe_keywords> <![CDATA[

And then in the nested CDATA block:

category: exposure
source: OpenStreetMap
subcategory: structure
title: Essential buildings
datatype: osm

And then the supplemental information block is closed:

]]> </inasafe_keywords> </gmd:supplementalInformation>

In future versions the keywords will be represented as JSON within the CDATA block.

Improvements to the clipping logic for rasters

In many cases, previous versions of InaSAFE were clipping raster layers sub-optimally. The resulting layers were not aligned with either the hazard or exposure layers. This affected the interpolation routines that are used during pixel lookups, resulting in less accurate analysis results. Here is a typical example of what you would see in the impact layer when extents were poorly aligned:

In version 2.2 of InaSAFE we have improved the algorithm used for clipping so that the clipping area will expand / contract as needed to the nearest pixel edge as per the diagram shown here. We also improved the numerical precision for clipping operations in order to ensure that edges are aligned as closely as possible.

Remaining Problem: Please note there is one remaining problem with clipping that we hope to address in a future version – it relates to raster datasets that have non-square pixels. In these cases currently only one edge is currently used for calculating clipping boundaries. See issue #1301 for more details. As a work around in the interim, we advise our users to try to use square pixel raster datasets whenever possible.

New volcano OpenStreetMap buildings impact function

InaSAFE 2.2 introduces the ability to assess buildings affected by volcano hazard zones. The buildings should be obtained using the OpenStreetMap downloader tool in InaSAFE. The impact report will break down the number of buildings per hazard zone, as shown in the screenshot here.

Raster flood on OSM buildings

As of InaSAFE 2.2 you can now produce an impact scenario assessment for a raster flood layer on OSM buildings. The impact function will break down the number of inundated (considered flooded), wet (may be flooded) and dry buildings. The building summaries are done by usage classes: Clinic/doctor, Commercial, Government, Office and so on.

Generic / categorical impact function

InaSAFE 2.2 introduces a new class of Impact Function: Generic Impact Functions. Generic impact functions treat exposure as a series of categories representing level of risk. This is extremely useful for developing scenarios based on a wide range of risks from flooding to fire to chemical hazard etc. Basically anything that can be quantified into three risk categories can now be used as the hazard for an impact assessment. These categories are defined according to the following classes in your hazard data raster layer:

1 : low risk
2 : medium risk
3 : high risk

Furthermore, the hazard layer should have these keywords:

• Category: hazard
• Subcategory: generic
• Unit: categorised

Currently categorised impacts can be calculated for population and OSM building exposure layers.

Extent selector tool

The new extent selector tool lets you define where the analysis extent should be explicitly. In previous versions, the determination of the analysis area was either the intersection of:

• the current viewport display area in QGIS
• the hazard layer extent
• the exposure layer extent

or (when ‘clip datasets to visible extents’ option is disabled in InaSAFE settings):

• the hazard layer extent
• the exposure layer extent

In 2.2 a new permutation allows you to define (by dragging a rectangle or by entering coordinates manually) the maximum analysis extent explicitly. The effective analysis area in this mode then becomes the intersection of:

• the user defined analysis maximal extent
• the hazard layer extent
• the exposure layer extent

To disable this behaviour simply open the new tool dialog and press the ‘Clear’ button, then close the window.

A new marquee / rubber band on the canvas display indicates where the user defined extent is by means of a blue rectangle.
As in previous versions, the effective analysis extent is defined by means of a green rectangle.
When an analysis is completed a red rectangle indicates the last completed analysis.

New minimum needs manager

This release adds a new minimum needs manager with support for regional minimum needs profiles. Minimum needs is a critical component of InaSAFE that is used to calculate the requirements (e.g., food & shelter) of displaced or affected people after a disaster. Up until now the values used to determine minimum needs in InaSAFE have been based on Indonesian national guidelines. This made it somewhat cumbersome to deal with regional variations in requirements, or to deploy InaSAFE into other regions which use substantially different guidelines for human needs in the event of a disaster.

With the new minimum needs manager in InaSAFE 2.2, you can define a ‘profile’ (e.g. Jakarta Needs) and then use specific defaults for e.g. daily rice requirements for that profile. By default we ship with standard profiles for Indonesia and the Philippines, and more profiles can easily be defined using the needs manager tool (pictured here).

New faster version of raster flood impact on roads

We have added a new faster implementation of ‘flood impact on roads’ impact function that uses raster hazard data. This improves the performance of the algorithm during the calculation of polygons per raster threshold.

New faster version of raster flood impact on roads

We have added a new faster implementation of ‘flood impact on roads’ impact function that uses raster hazard data. This improves the performance of the algorithm during the calculation of polygons per raster threshold.

Updated keywords editor user interface revised

The keyword editor user interface has been revised, grouping options into tabs in order to improve the layout of the dialog. The Post-processing tab is disabled except when you have defined the current layer to be a post-processing layer.

Analysis extents pre-and-postview tool

With this hand tool you can see what the next analysis extent will be (based on the intersection of hazard layer, exposure layer and current view extents). This is shown as a green rectangle on the map. When you have completed an analysis, the extents of the last run analysis are show as a red ‘postview’ rectangle.

New keywords wizard

This is the first of three wizards that we will be adding to the InaSAFE user interface (the other two will arrive in subsequent releases). The keywords wizard provides an alternative to the keywords editor for creating keywords files for hazard, exposure and post-processing layers. The wizard uses rich new metadata which have been added to each impact function in order to ensure that the keywords assigned to a given layer will always be correct according to their context. For example, the wizard will prevent you from assigning a hazard category to a line layer since there are currently no supported line based hazards.

Training materials updates

We have been hard at work to improve our documentation on https://inasafe.org. The tutorials section has been overhauled at /en/training/index.html. We have also added an archive section which you can use to fetch older versions of our documentation (see /pdf/). We have also added a new download section to our web site https://data.inasafe.org/ which contains the sample data used in the training materials. We have made many other improvements to the documentation – we hope you find the information you need to be productive with InaSAFE!

Polygon flood impact on roads impact function added

Our first demonstrator impact function that uses the native QGIS geoprocessing functionality is included in INaSAFE 2.0. The function takes as input a polygon flood layer (category: hazard, subcategory: flood [wet/dry]) and a roads layer (category: exposure, subcategory: road). It will return a new roads layer where each road segment is classified as inundated or not inundated. You can download suitable roads data using the OSM Downloader tool roads fetcher as mentioned below.

Report view in your web browser

If you find the dock panel too small to show all the report details, or if you want to open it in your browser to quickly print the tabular report, you can now do so by right clicking on the report area of the InaSAFE dock and choose Open in web browser.

Custom logo selection

As well as the new report template capabilities, you can now also set your organisation logo in the InaSAFE options dialog. This logo will then be used for any of the built in InaSAFE templates that you use, or anywhere in your own templates if you use the element id safe-logo. Click image on right to see an example of how the organisation logo is placed in the bottom right of the template.

Template based reports

Another key new feature in InaSAFE 2.0 is the ability to define and use custom print templates (using the built in QGIS composer templating system) for your reports. This new feature means that you can now place your own logos in the report and customise the arrangement of the various report elements on the page. You can also print onto different page sizes (e.g. A3, A2) and in different layouts (portrait, landscape). You can find more details about this functionality at /en/user-docs/application-help/reports.htm.

Impact merge tool

This tool will allow you to merge the output from two impact assessments covering the same geographic extent and aggregated by the same areas. For example if you run a flood analysis on Kapubaten (districts) in Jakarta for both impact on people and buildings, you can generate a report that combines these two exposures into a single report.

The generated report combines the result of post-processing analysis on each area, for example generating totals for each type of critical building affected, age and gender breakdowns etc.

OSM Roads downloader

In InaSAFE 1.2 we introduced the new OSM downloader tool for buildings data. As well as making some improvements to the way that the downloaded buildings are categorised, we have also added a new tool that will allow you to download roads data. When the data is downloaded, it is automatically assigned the correct keywords to be usable in QGIS (see separate changelog entry on impact on roads) and assigned a style.

Options dialog overhaul

We have overhauled the options dialog to make it easier to navigate and hide away advanced options into their own panel.

New User Map

We have added a community map to our web site. Please take a moment to register yourself there as an InaSAFE User, Developer or Trainer! It will help us a lot to see who our users are and where they are located. The map is built using the opensource Leaflet javascript library and uses the OpenStreemap.org Humanitarian Openstreetmap Style. See https://users.inasafe.org