Data conversion from gis to urban area model for natural disaster simulation

This paper presents a methodology of data conversion from GIS to urban area models which are used for the numerical simulations of natural disasters. The key point of the methodology is the use of intermediate data, i.e., GIS is converted to the intermediate data from which the urban area models are constructed. Two kinds of intermediate data are developed, and they are converted to models for earthquake disaster simulation and for ood or volcano eruption simulation. The robustness of the data conversion is examined, and commercial GIS is successfully converted to urban area models for earthquake, ood and volcano eruption simulations.