Major concerns of defining the map symbol standard in emergency management

Map symbols play a big role in emergency mapping applications as the spatial technology increasingly becomes very important for decision makers to make judgments in emergency management. Badly defined map symbols may lead many difficulties in collaborative emergency management. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the methodology of defining the map symbols in a comprehensive and standardized way. Existing map symbols standards and the methods to define them are compared and analyzed. Key issues are pointed out and useful hints are described. Based on our research progress, examples are given to explain the proposed approach.