GPS World

Tag: FEMA

  • How public safety GIS saves us when disaster strikes

    How public safety GIS saves us when disaster strikes

    Tenacity of spirit is one of the great virtues. Supporters of geospatial technology have often had to endure steadfast resolve convincing others of the multi-dimensional value GIS provides. It is a battle best won by seeing and doing rather than by words.

    Jack Maple proved the value of GIS to public safety in the early 1990s by using it to fight crime. But, in the context of firefighting and disaster operations, GIS had not been used.

    Then, in the early 2000s, due in large part to 9/11, the government’s interest in GIS increased.

    It was a necessary evolution. Technologies at the time were rapidly advancing. Computer graphics, computer processing power, the internet, shared databases, GPS, digital imagery, and mobile devices needed to merge. GIS was the only solution to bring them all together.

    At the same time, disasters became increasingly destructive. Public safety and emergency management needed solutions, but most of the funding is by the government with tight budgets, so investments into geospatial technologies and specialized staff were limited.

    It wasn’t until 2010 that FEMA hired the first Geospatial Information Officer. And, the Geospatial Data Act did not become law until 2018. The need was there but not the resources.

    Logo: NAPSG Foundation

    A small group of individuals saw that gap and together they began providing support to the public safety sector. The first organization they were able to work with was the National Association of State Fire Marshalls. Word quickly spread. Soon, other organizations began asking for geospatial services.

    Eventually, 11 national organizations came together to provide support, structure and purpose for the fledgling team of GIS volunteers. This group became the founders of the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS (NAPSG) Foundation.

    Now, 15 years later, NAPSG has contributed to recovery after every major disaster and many minor ones throughout the United States. Its success extends internationally — NAPSG has helped other countries set up their own public safety GIS support teams.

    Image: NAPSG [https://www.napsgfoundation.org/]
    Image: NAPSG

    Membership in NAPSG has grown to more than 65,000. Its members are involved in supporting operations for fires, flooding, search and rescue, earthquakes, storm and tornado damage, health crises, chemical spills, and more. They have become central to emergency management operations, helping coordinate efforts of multiple groups through GIS platforms.

    During and after events, NAPSG hosts debriefs to evaluate and improve ongoing and future operations. The result advances the field of public safety. NAPSG also provides education to its constituent communities and makes its training available to the public.

    NAPSG and its members are highly valued. Every state GIS council has the group as a point of contact. NAPSG is a trusted entity at the community level up through to the highest levels of the federal government, and they are one of the first calls FEMA makes in a crisis.

    Tari Martin
    Tari Martin

    I had the opportunity to interview Tari Martin (GISP), the director of national and federal programs, one of the leaders in NAPSG. Speaking with Tari made me realize that GIS is still early in its adoption phase. Tari is one of the founders of GIS at the state level. Earlier in her career she was the first person in the state of Maryland dedicated to supporting emergency management operations.

    She helped build Maryland’s emergency management framework coordinated efforts with the National Incident Management System (NIMS), and she began pulling in federal data such as the Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Dataset (HIFLD) for use in local operations.

    Now, Tari serves on the Maryland GIS Council for the Public Safety/Next Generation 911 Subcommittee in addition to her regular duties as a director for NAPSG. Tari also serves as a program manager, working to create a universal symbology for public safety and emergency management.

    Maps and map symbology are revered. Map symbology emerged from a long, proud, history of cartography dating back to a time before the Golden Age of Exploration when maps were adorned with beautiful, hand-drawn symbols of wind roses, sea creatures, and exotic plants and animals; including inscriptions, such as that within the cartouche of the Typus Orbis Terrarum (Atlas of the World) by Ortelius in 1573. Therein are inscribed the words from Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, “Quid ei potest videri magnum in rebus humanis, cui aeternitas omnis, totiusque mundi nota sit magnitudo,” which translated means, “For what human affairs can seem important to a person who keeps all eternity before his eyes and knows the vastness of the universe?”

    Map symbology has been more an art than a science driven predominantly to support specific purposes, such as navigation, war, surveying, mining, construction and recreation. Additionally, symbologies may not translate across professions, regions or cultures. Even when the symbols are the same, the colors may be different giving symbols different meanings.

    Symbols are a visual language, and as the world becomes increasingly smaller and emergency events more international, the need for the language of maps to become universal is necessary. NAPSG has taken on that challenge, coordinating input from multiple stakeholders.

    In essence, NAPSG is working with groups like Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) to create the Rosetta Stone of map symbology for public safety and emergency management, and Tari Martin is one of the central figures working on that project. The symbol library is free and publicly available on the NAPSG website.

    Tari also reminisced about her early days when she first got into GIS just before Hurricane Katrina, and how many of her co-workers in Maryland mobilized to go down and help out with recovery operations. She stated that was one of the moments in her career that cemented her understanding for the value of GIS in post-disaster operations. Tari now teaches a course on GIS in Emergency Management for URISA.

    NAPSG is involved in cutting-edge technologies helping to shape and educate the public safety community. Its members are working with autonomous vehicles, indoor mapping technologies, augmented reality and virtual reality, wearables, and other opportunities as they arise.

    NAPSG makes its content available online. Explore its best practices, guidance and standards, education and training, events, qualifications and credentialing, toolkits and more. Become a NAPSG member at no cost.

    Prior articles referenced:

    William Tewelow works for the Federal Aviation Administration. He is a graduate of the FAA management fellowship program and while on special assignment to the U.S. Department of Transportation William led a national strategic geospatial project for the White House Open Data Partnership. He is a Geographic Information Systems Professional (GISP) and a Maryland STEMnet Scholar Speaker. He has degrees in Geographic Information Technology and Intelligence Studies, and is currently pursuing a masters degree in Organizational Management. He was among the first in the nation to earn a Geospatial Specialist Certification from the U.S. Department of Labor while working at NASA Stennis Space Center.

    William retired from the U.S. Navy after serving 23 years as a Geospatial and Imagery Intelligence Specialist, a Naval Aviator, a Meteorologist, and a Tactical Oceanographer. He is married, enjoys writing, traveling, solving problems, and is fascinated by new technology and historical context. His favorite quote is, “A man’s mind changed by a new idea can never go back to its original dimension.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

  • Research Roundup: Navigation in urban environments

    Research Roundup: Navigation in urban environments

    Image: Moncherie/E+/Getty Images
    Image: Moncherie/E+/Getty Images

    Of the hundreds of papers researchers presented this year at the Institute of Navigation’s annual ION GNSS+ conference, which took place virtually Sept. 21–25, the following three focused on navigation in urban environments. Papers are available at www.ion.org/publications/browse.cfm.

    Low-Cost Single-Frequency PPP System

    Featuring multi-constellation global availability, fast convergence and continuous navigation solutions, Instant PPP (IP3) was developed as an ideal precise positioning solution for mass-market applications in urban environments. The low-cost single-frequency PPP system demonstrates 50-cm accuracy in open-sky and suburban environments, and is further enhanced to support precise positioning in urban environments. The IP3 library is uniquely designed and enhanced. For instance, the instant receiver velocity based on the Doppler observations and the coordinate changes calculated from the carrier-phase differences between two consecutive epochs are integrated for the one-step prediction of the receiver positions in the Kalman filter.

    Meanwhile, the weight of carrier phase, pseudorange and Doppler observations are smartly tuned as a function of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) respectively. Additionally, quality control adapts to different scenarios, such as open-sky or urban environments. The receiver clock drifts for different constellations are specifically modelled in the velocity estimation to increase the degrees of freedom, which further enhances the solution availability in these extreme challenging situations.

    To evaluate the IP3 library in urban environments, real-time vehicle-based field tests were carried out with an IP3 evaluation kit in Calgary, Canada. Results indicate the IP3 library can provide 50-cm accuracy in suburban areas with 100% solution availability. In an urban environment with numerous high buildings, the positioning root-mean-square error (RMS) of IP3 degrades to meter level while the solution availability remains 100%. IP3 can provide precise positioning solutions with low-cost GNSS receivers even in urban environments.

    Citation. Hongzhou Yang, Fei Liu and Yang Gao, Profound Positioning Inc., Canada, “Precise Positioning into Urban Environments: A Low-Cost Single-Frequency PPP System.”

    A Sub-Meter Real-time Positioning Service for Smartphones

    A real-time positioning service for smartphones that meets a target threshold of 50 centimeters in urban environments is evaluated. The evaluation is possible through the Flamingo service, an API library for smartphone developers that enables higher accuracies than standard Google location services. The API is offered in a format that simply replaces Android location, streamlining its integration into new and existing applications that require better positioning. The service provides reference station infrastructure and correctional data products through a modified version of traditional NTRIP services. Duty cycling, low-quality clocks and high RF interference are common in a smartphone, so pre-filtering algorithms have been designed and calibrated to reject and de-weight poor measurements.

    Based on proximity to a local base station, the service decides whether to use RTK or PPP-like processing. Performance is assessed on positioning accuracy, reliability and availability. Different operational environments are tested, such as pedestrian navigation in a congested area, and cycling scenarios. These are chosen to closely correspond to various applications. Rather than proving ideal test conditions and post-processing to optimize performance, the study focuses on realistic, real-time processing inside a smartphone.

    Results are collected through a simple logging app that uses the Flamingo API. A target is set for 50 cm or better accuracies, where current smartphone positioning is within only a few meters. This enables mass-market location services to be applied in new markets such as augmented reality, lower accuracy surveying, GIS asset collection, and navigation assistance applications.

    Citation. Joshua Critchley-Marrows, William Roberts, Malgorzata Siutkowska, Maria Ivanovici, NSL, UK; Valentin Barreau, Soufian Ayachi, Laurent Arzel, Telespazio, France, “A Sub-Meter Real-Time Positioning Service for Smartphones.”

    The Path to Robust Municipal PNT

    This research identifies where municipal governments fit in the positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) ecosphere, their awareness of PNT-related issues, whether and how they are approaching these issues, and actions they can take to improve their services to citizens and travelers. Lessons from other areas are applied, such as the resource typing construct used in FEMA’s National Incident Management System, to develop best practices for city PNT activity. This work will guide cities in addressing this important area and assist policy makers in efforts to involve cities in the development and implementation of PNT processes.

    Citation. Steven Polunsky, Alabama Transportation Policy Research Center, University of Alabama, “The Path to Robust Municipal PNT.”

  • How the Civil Air Patrol relies on GIS for civil defense

    How the Civil Air Patrol relies on GIS for civil defense

    As technology evolves, the Civil Air Patrol will continue to be a platform for implementing new technologies to secure the country in times of crisis.

    The strength of this country isn’t in buildings of brick and steel. It’s in the hearts of those who have sworn to fight for its freedom!
    —Captain America
    Eyes of the Home Skies, World War II-era poster of Civil Air Patrol. (Image: CAP)
    Eyes of the Home Skies, World War II-era poster of Civil Air Patrol. (Image: CAP)

    If you are someone who likes aviation, GIS and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and computer vision, and you want to fulfill a greater sense of purpose, the perfect time is now.

    The Flying Minute Men, so called by Robert Neprud in the 1948 Story of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), serve on the frontlines of national threats and disasters. They are the air wing for first responders.

    CAP works with many government organizations including the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Guard, and many others.

    CAP works with non-government organizations too, such as the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF), the GIS Corps, the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS (NAPSG), and the Red Cross.

    CAP also works with youth teaching valuable skills in leadership, community service, STEM and aviation. It has a proud heritage originating in World War II.Logo: Civil Air Patrol

    In the final days of 1941, the world was in flames. Dark shadows lurked in the waters off American shores. German U-boats attacked ships along the coast. The newly established Office of Civilian Defense understood the importance of aviation for stopping the U-boat threat but lacked the military resources. On Monday, December 1, 1941, six days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Administrative Order 9 was signed creating the Civil Air Patrol, but there would be no celebration. The threat was all too real. The Battle of the Atlantic had begun. Within a few months Germany sank over 230 ships in U.S. waters. American shores were on fire.

    A list of known shipwrecks and their locations in U.S. waters can be downloaded from NOAA’s Coastal Survey website. It is not a complete or a clean dataset so some wrangling will be required. A shortcut is using the shipwreck layer in Google Earth. Along the Atlantic Coast, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean Sea there are multiple sunken German U-boats. Most notably are U-85, the first U-Boat sunk by the U.S. Navy in WWII, less than 20 miles off of Nag’s Head, North Carolina (35.885, -75.2829); and U-853, the last one to be sunk in WWII 10 miles off the coast of Rhode Island less than 24 hours before Germany’s surrender (41.2268, -71.4187).

    The American tanker SS Harry F. Sinclair burns south of Cape Lookout North Carolina, torpedoed by U-203 on April 11, 1942. (Photo: U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command)
    The American tanker SS Harry F. Sinclair burns south of Cape Lookout North Carolina, torpedoed by U-203 on April 11, 1942. (Photo: U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command)

    During the War, the Civil Air Patrol flew 5,684 aerial escorts for shipping convoys keeping the sea lanes safe and enabling supplies to get to Europe and North Africa. Shortly after the war, on July 1, 1946, President Truman recognized the valuable contribution made by the Civil Air Patrol making them permanent, but once again there was no celebration. On the same day, responding to overwhelming public attention, TIME published “COSMOCLAST EINSTEIN: All matter is speed and flame.” Radios around the world tuned-in as the clock counted down to zero hour. The first post-war atomic bomb was detonated at 22:00 Greenwich Mean Time (5:00 PM Eastern) in Bikini Lagoon (11°36’00” N 165°29’00” E) over a ghost fleet of ninety-five ships in the middle of the Pacific. History’s long shadow fell over the moment. The applause of a grateful nation for the Flying Minute Men was silence.

    It is the mark of real heroes, duty is the highest honor, the rewards are personal having the courage to stand in the face of danger and clasp the hand of Victory. It is valor not fame that makes heroes of normal men and women. The Civil Air Patrol rarely makes the front page, but it supports many of the nation’s most significant events.

    Photo of Ground Zero taken on September 12, 2001 by Civil Air Patrol. (Photo: CAP)
    Photo of Ground Zero taken on September 12, 2001 by Civil Air Patrol. (Photo: CAP)

    The first photographs of Ground Zero released to the public the day after September 11, 2001, were taken by the Civil Air Patrol. With the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 the Civil Air Patrol took on a much larger role in homeland security. CAP serves a unique purpose flying a multitude of missions because aircraft can fly for extended periods at optimum altitudes to get the best resolution. CAP imagery is often the most currently available and of the highest quality after an event. The Civil Air Patrol aircraft can carry interchangeable sensor arrays, such as thermal cameras, synthetic aperture radars, lidar, communications equipment, and more. Imagery collected by the Civil Air Patrol is publicly available on the CAP GIS Portal.

    In 2017, FEMA hosted a Disaster Crowdsourcing Exchange laying a foundation for working with the Civil Air Patrol to push the imagery out to various crowdsourcing channels. The Red Cross Humanitarian OpenStreetMaps Team (HOT) used it to map road networks. Crowdsourced imagery analysts used it for feature extraction and damage assessments. In 2018, this effort was developed further using Hurricane Michael imagery of Panama City, Florida, for creating artificial intelligence algorithms to identify and extract features.

    The Civil Air Patrol captures imagery with the WaldoAir XCAM Ultra 50 by flying in overlapping circles as the aircraft sweeps over a disaster area. The overlapping images allow the system to create high-resolution 3D point clouds. The spatial intelligence algorithms employed with post flight processing conducted by Skyline and GeoX can automate feature extraction of buildings, vehicles, bridges, roads, cell towers, and other structures, and identify structures as destroyed, damaged, or undamaged. The system can begin damage assessments almost immediately. The process used to take several weeks with an enormous cadre of specialists and resources and now it can finish in a few days or less with a handful of specialized staff.

    I had the privilege of speaking with the Director of Operations for the Civil Air Patrol, Mr. John Desmarais, or Moose as his friends know him. He is a 33-year veteran of CAP, has a pilot’s license, a master’s degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and is married with two children. Moose shared how September 11th, 2001 changed his commitment and understanding of C.A.P.’s role working with and supporting homeland security missions. He shared with me some of the stories above and gave me an in-depth look into CAP’s future.

    Screenshot: Civil Air Patrol
    Screenshot: Civil Air Patrol

    Today, the Civil Air Patrol supports important missions. For FEMA CAP does post-event damage assessments after hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, fires, earthquakes, dam bursts, and more. This will be able to get people the assistance they need much faster ultimately saving lives. This year alone, the Civil Air Patrol has saved 91 lives according to the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center. Other examples are providing search & rescue, border protection, homeland security, emergency flight services, remote sensing, humanitarian support, education and training, and Air Force training support to name a few. These initial successes led Christopher Vaughan, the Geographic Information Officer of FEMA, to request the Civil Air Patrol provide GIS support for natural disaster operations. CAP remains very active fulfilling that commitment. Mr. Desmarais said that CAP took close to half a million pictures for the 2018 hurricane season. FEMA hosts all of CAP’s publicly available imagery as part of its GEOPlatform.

    Civil Air Patrol Cessna. (Photo: CAP)
    Civil Air Patrol Cessna. (Photo: CAP)

    GIS has always been a huge part of what the Civil Air Patrol does when looking at it from a basic level of identifying locations, features, and information. Now, GIS is becoming central to the operations of the Civil Air Patrol because it is a force multiplier as in the example above, using spatial intelligence for completing disaster estimates in days instead of weeks with a fraction of the staff. This is powerful and driving the future of CAP towards a more geocentric operation. CAP’s GIS future is in modeling, remote sensing, crowdsourcing, artificial spatial intelligence, and data sharing.

    In 2019, the Civil Air Patrol proposed its path forward creating opportunities for its members to gain valuable GIS skills and creating a qualification in GIS Operations. The Civil Air Patrol has recently begun fielding courses with support from its partners to provide training qualifications. Members of CAP can receive the following training courses: GIS for Emergency Managers, GIS Applications for Emergency Management, GIS Specialist and training in HAZUS, a GIS-based hazard analysis tool. This requirement for operations to become geocentric is so great that a call went out for people who are doing GIS work to reach out to the Civil Air Patrol Wing in their local area and consider joining. To find out more get in touch with your local Wing, visit www.GoCivilAirPatrol.com and enter your zip code to find a CAP squadron near you or you can reach out to the CAP National GIS team at [email protected] for more information. The Civil Air Patrol is using GIS more every day for search and rescue operations where CAP members are locating aircraft crash sites using ADS-B and radar data, and locating missing persons using cell phone forensics, and creating situational awareness maps for tracking resources and planning purposes for CAP senior leaders.

    The Civil Air Patrol is investing into autonomous aircraft technologies. It has the largest inventory of small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) for civilian/ public safety use in the nation. The great advantages to CAP for sUAS are their low costs to deploy and their ability to collect close-up, high-resolutions imagery with minimal risk to people. In disaster areas flying low level flights are extremely hazardous to piloted aircraft because wires and cables and other smaller objects that have shifted. The use of sUAS will fly alongside emergency responders and CAP expects to have sUAS available for each of its 150 incident command posts across the country by the end of 2020 with over 1,000 trained operators nationwide.

    In the future, the high-resolution 3D imagery point clouds will enable the Civil Air Patrol to provide real-time virtual environments and augmented reality enhanced awareness for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations, especially when that imagery is infused with powerful geographic information systems and artificial spatial intelligence algorithms.

    In the near term, the Civil Air Patrol will be expanding the number of aircraft it has equipped with FLIR and other high-end sensors and will continue growing its sUAS operations. It will continue its outreach efforts to build working relationships with new partners and bring onboard volunteers interested in supporting GIS and imagery analysis.

    As technology evolves, the Civil Air Patrol will continue to be a platform for implementing new technologies to secure the country in times of crisis. The words spoken by Colonel Scott at the First Report to Congress in May 1948 continue to ring true.

    “I predict that the Civil Air Patrol will grow immeasurably stronger — it will continue to contribute to the strength and the security of this nation.”
    —Colonel Scott, First Report to Congress, May 1948

     

  • The story of GIS at DHS: From Manhattan to Katrina

    Part 1

    In a rare historic moment, Congress understood geospatial technology’s important role would be key to support the new Department of Homeland Security.

    Written by Nate Smith; edited and co-written by William Tewelow, GISP

    If it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger, but therein is the rub: You first have to avoid dying. Nothing sharpens the mind like trying to survive.

    On Tuesday morning, Sept. 11, 2001, the United States suffered a near mortal wound. In order to recover, there was no margin for error. Surviving depended upon getting it right. Failing to “connect the dots” again could prove fatal.

    The cause, in large part, were organizational silos in the intelligence and security agencies and no structure upon which intelligence data could be shared across the silos. With terminal lucidity at failure’s dire consequences, in a rare historic moment, Congress, seldom praised for innovative thinking, understood geospatial technology’s important role and would be key for supporting the agency’s mission.

    Click for an overview presentation on the GMO. (Image: DHS)
    Click for an overview presentation on the GMO. (Image: DHS)

    The government had to be restructured and given new tools and technologies to ensure our safety. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was the centerpiece of this effort bringing a number of established security focused organizations under its umbrella.

    The creation of DHS was an unprecedented task in the modern era. Many of Congress’ recommendations were codified in the founding of the Geospatial Management Office (GMO) established within DHS.

    Connecting the Geospatial Dots. The GMO’s mission was to create community, infrastructure, and the sharing of data and ideas ensuring future dots get connected to anticipate trends and stay ahead of adversaries avoiding another shock to our nation.

    The early GMO was modestly funded and staffed with employees on short-term assignments from other agencies in borrowed office space at Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) headquarters.

    The first geographic information officer, Ryan Cast, developed the work plan, putting emphasis on discovering what data and opportunities already existed and identifying activities that supported and enhanced the component agencies. Integrating the agencies capabilities and optimizing their interoperability was the focus of his leadership laying a strong foundation for future GIO’s to build upon.

    Weathering Hurricane Katrina

    The GMO was still finding its sea legs when Hurricane Katrina struck in 2004. Since expectations were low, they did not bear the brunt of the critics. The GMO, seeing the negative attention directed towards FEMA, created innovative partnerships with National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA, which was NIMA at the time) and the United States Geographic Survey (USGS) employing their prototype technology to assist the recovery and response community, who were looking for innovations to ensure wide access to data and tools.

    <b>Before and after Hurricane Katrina:</b> Photos taken off the coast of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, show how the storm surge, estimated to have exceeded 20 feet in Waveland, destroyed homes and left only foundations. Trees have been denuded of all vegetation. (Photo: USGS)
    Before and after Hurricane Katrina: Photos taken off the coast of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, show how the storm surge, estimated to have exceeded 20 feet in Waveland, destroyed homes and left only foundations. Trees have been denuded of all vegetation. (Photo: USGS)
    <b>Before and after Hurricane Katrina:</b>In the top image, taken in 1998, notice the Deep South Motel to the left and the apartment building to the right. The bottom image shows the same location on Aug. 31, 2005, two days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall. A small portion of the motel is only structure left standing. (Photo: USGS)
    Before and after Hurricane Katrina:In the top image, taken in 1998, notice the Deep South Motel to the left and the apartment building to the right. The bottom image shows the same location on Aug. 31, 2005, two days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall. A small portion of the motel is only structure left standing. (Photo: USGS)

    A key partnership was established between FEMA and Louisiana State University to develop a geospatial data clearinghouse, which proved to be useful to many agencies and researchers.

    iCAV. One technical innovation in response to Katrina was the DHS Infrastructure Critical Asset Viewer (iCAV) interactive mapping platform branded as GIS for the Gulf.

    iCAV was built on technology borrowed from NGA’s Palanterra Common Operational Picture (COP) system, repurposed for the DHS mission, providing map-based situational awareness.

    From this operational experience, additional design elements were identified for improvement, including symbology on the front end and data modeling on the back end. These became central aspects of development for the GMO.

    USNG. Katrina also highlighted the need for a more universally accepted referencing framework to assist field operations, planting the seeds for the development of a U.S. National Grid system (USNG).

    I personally experienced the need for a USNG, having lived on the Mississippi Coast at the time. GIS in the government, especially the use of it domestically at the federal level was almost non-existent, and with all the landmarks and road signs gone, the entire coastal area was uncharted territory.

    More than once I helped a lost Red Cross supply truck return to the main road.

    Hurricane Harvey Hits Hard

    Fast forward to Aug. 25, 2017, when there was a brief, collective sigh of relief as the full destructive force of Hurricane Harvey’s eye wall missed the highly populated areas of the Texas coast. The pause was brief. Coming into focus through rainfall observations and numerical weather models meteorologists and emergency managers understood another peril was imminent.

    Harvey had lost its steering winds and would linger in the Houston area dumping over 50 inches of rain in the coming days. In Houston, there was alarm as this deluge would likely far exceed the engineered capacities of the channels and reservoirs and an epic flood was in the making. This anxiety was shared with the regional FEMA office and in the Washington, D.C. headquarters.

    FEMA’s geospatial experts in D.C., having recently demonstrated their successful impact analysis approach in Louisiana, felt assured they could quickly grasp the magnitude of this event with high confidence, but were concerned about another type of flood — the flood of data and tools, as well as inquiries distracting them from their primary focus.

    Partnerships, capabilities and expertise. Events such as these attract well intentioned and ambitious researchers and vendors seeking the time and attention of response leaders to share their resources and gain access to FEMA’s data. Even short conversations consume critical time.

    These secondary groups often contribute valuable resources and services playing key roles in community learning and development so their outreach efforts need to be balanced.

    Rather than ignoring these efforts, FEMA contacted the GMO to leverage their partnerships, capabilities and expertise to facilitate these exchanges. In one day, the GMO developed a publicly accessible portal and assigned a team of geospatial experts the responsibility to catalog and make discoverable all geospatial data related to Hurricane Harvey.

    Over the following two weeks, this response became a model of transparency, innovation and collaboration, and the site is still available supporting research and providing an example for future events. The site was a great example of government getting it right, but it came at a price, and still there are two long shadows cast by towers no longer there.

    Conclusion

    From Greater Manhattan to Katrina’s desolation and the floods of Harvey, significant advances were on the horizon and expectations were on the rise for the GMO. In Part 2, we will explore this growth and see how these lessons and the efforts of many led to the current state of geospatial preparedness and capability in the DHS’ geospatial shop.

    Read Geospatial Solutions’ interview of Christopher Vaughan, FEMA Geospatial Information Officer, and his account of Hurricane Harvey.

    Further Reading

    How GIS — and you — can aid in disaster response


    Homeland Security Working Group

    Hurricane Response Mapping

    LSU GIS Information Clearinghouse

    FEMA Enterprise GIS Services

    Conference Report on S. 2845, Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.

    Geospatial Management Office, established by Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 Title VII, Subtitle B, Section 8201, Homeland Security Geospatial Information – Implemented through DHS Management Directive 4030, 11/12/2004.

    Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Data (HIFLD) Hurricane Harvey Response.

    September 11, 2001. Never forget.

    Geographic Information Officers of GMO
    • Ryan Cast (2003-2005)
    • Dan Cotter (2005-2007)
    • Jeff Booth (2007-2012)
    • David Alexander (2012-2015)
    • David Lilley (2015-2016)
    • Michael Donnelly (2016-Present)

    Guest author Nate Smith is an independent consultant who has worked for over 25 years advancing the adoption of geospatial technology to disaster management, humanitarian response and natural disaster risk reduction.

  • How GIS — and you — can aid in disaster response

    Whether you are on the helping end of a disaster aiding in the rescue and recovery, or on the receiving end being aided, GIS is supercharging the rescue efforts.

    How can I help you if I don’t know where you are?

    Hurricane Harvey hits. The storm was worsening. Winds were sustained at over 120 mph. Landfall of Hurricane Harvey was expected in 48 hours. Worse, the storm was forecast to stall once overland creating the single worst rain event in United States history.

    Texas Governor Greg Abbott  encouraged people to evacuate, especially those in low lying areas. Mayor Turner had only hours to decide the possible fate of millions. Making the call not to evacuate a category 4 hurricane approaching the city could be political suicide. Consider the fallout after Hurricane Katrina. The models clearly showed the extent of flooding and how many people would be trapped in their cars on flooded roads.

    “You cannot put 6.5 million people on the road,” said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner. The mayor’s ultimate decision not to issue an evacuation declaration was based on geospatial models, and as devastating as they were, it showed a better outcome if everyone stocked up, stayed put, and helped each other out after the storm. At least by staying home we will know where people are after the storm.

    Gov. Abbott fully mobilized the National Guard and another 30 state agencies responded to the crisis. U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) calls to action went out to the Coast Guard and volunteer organizations. Small boats, raised axel trucks and Vietnam-era looking personnel carriers were brought in for support, along with helicopters, drones and search and rescue airplanes.

    First responders were issued full body waders and foul weather gear. Thousands of hypothermia blankets were stockpiled and cargo trucks carrying food, water and cots headed south. Volunteers from the Cajun Navy, Team Rubicon, the Red Cross, Open Street Maps, Samaritan’s Purse and others positioned their able-bodied forces along the periphery of the storm’s path ready to move in as soon as given the word.

    Thursday afternoon the winds and rains began getting increasingly worse. Darkness fell and by 10 p.m. the eye of the storm had made landfall. Rivers and streams began overflowing due in part to the storm surge moving waters upstream. Streets no longer drained the waters. The flooding continued to rise.

    Tremendous thermodynamic forces. Hurricanes aren’t a single, solid storm, though they may look like it from satellite imagery. They are enormous atmospheric depressions like a hole formed in the sky and air masses from thousands of miles around rush in to fill the void. These converging air masses create immense thermodynamic forces extending outward from a central vortex in long sweeping radial bands like blades of an enormous turbine.

    A hurricane is the cumulative fury of these destructive forces storm after storm after in rapid succession. Winds increase and decrease as the radial bands pass overhead becoming stronger and more constant as the eye approaches. Every plank, nail and screw is tested. Immense gusts like giant hammers breaks away loose thing. Strains of timber and steel shriek in the wind. In seconds sounds of groaning trees and the air fills with flying debris. Rain comes down in torrents.

    But in between these spiral bands it slows, sometimes stopping all together, even sunshine or moonlight might break through, but to believe the storm is over would be wrong — maybe dead wrong. Another band will sweep in with gusting, howling wind, thick, heavy clouds and dark skies, and rain, more and more rain, and the rising waters turning into gushing floods. Moments of endless terror turn into hours, the waters rising higher ever higher.

    Finally, 49 inches of rain and three days later the storm ended moving offshore. Its destruction shut down the fourth largest city in the United States.

    “…Texans have suffered a great hardship, their warmth and resiliency is truly inspiring,” said Gov. Abbott. The overwhelming willingness of people and organizations to help once the storm passed brought its own challenges. A convergence of rescue and recovery teams began.

    Leaders needed. It was obvious a coordinated effort needed to happen. Volunteers and organizations needed to work in unison. FEMA had to establish that order. The coordination center was formed, not unlike other disasters, but this time another dimension was added to it. FEMA was aware of social media’s ability to positively impact rescue operations tapping into briefly during Superstorm Sandy, the last large scale disaster to hit the United States, but FEMA lacked the necessary skills and expertise to capitalize on the technology.

    It is times like these that the greatest of all resources is realized. When asked what is the greatest asset, the answers most often given are manpower, money, equipment or supplies; however, even if there are plenty of the above, it is quickly realized the greatest resource is leadership. In times of crises, normal authority is laid aside and given to those who can bring order to the chaos.

    Christopher Vaughn, the geospatial information officer for FEMA, and Adrian Gardner, the chief information officer for FEMA, were those individuals stepping up to the task at hand. They understood getting better data faster and putting it into geospatial context held the answer. Once done that would be the foundational layer. All the other elements could then be added, like imagery, lots and lots of imagery, both before and after; and then overlay crowdsourced data.

    Vaughn, working with his counterparts in the Department of Homeland Security, brought in Homeland Infrastructure Foundation Level Data (HIFLD) layers, along with the Civil Air Patrol and DigitalGlobe’s Open Data Program. Launched in 2017, the program provides before and after imagery. Vaughn understood that the citizen-as-a-censor model provided raw, real-time and relevant information. It had to be tapped into to get control of the rescue operations.

    Sophia Liu, Ph.D., an Innovation Specialist and expert in crowdsource efforts was brought in from the United States Geographic Survey (USGS). Liu was the key to unlocking the crowd. She shared her greatest challenge was the misconceptions around the use of social media and an apprehension to using it without proper approvals from public relations. It took some convincing to change these mindsets.

    What helped tip the scales in her favor was Hurricane Irma coming right on the heels of Hurricane Harvey and then Hurricane Maria. The disasters were coming in way too fast and the detractors were drowned out by the need for information. Once they saw the value of crowdsourcing, there was little resistance.

    Challenges in Puerto Rico. The results spoke for themselves. In Puerto Rico, within only a few weeks of Hurricane Maria’s devastation, 1.4 million homes were analyzed for damage and 24,000 miles of roads were digitized through volunteer groups like GIS Corps and OpenStreetMaps.

    One of the greatest challenges in Puerto Rico was the lack of street addresses. That is more common than one might realize. In many parts of the world there is no established address system and locations are more or less oriented to significant landmarks. It is difficult for Americans to understand, but in other cultures generations of families grow up in the same neighborhoods. Everyone knows everyone else. Location is personal. In the case of disasters this poses a huge challenge, especially when roads and landmarks are destroyed, and people have evacuated.

    The company What3Words (W3W) is tackling this issue. W3W works uses a pixelated Earth system of 3 meter by 3 meter squares. Each grid can be defined by a set of three words. As I write this I am sitting in bump.cans.dome.

    W3W does away with traditional numerical latitude and longitude. It works in any language, in fact, eight countries have partnered with W3W as either the nation’s official addressing system or an alternate system, and the United Nations has it among their disaster reporting tools. Art Kalinski, the former writer of this column wrote an article last year about W3W, what3words: The geospatial advancement of the year?

    In Puerto Rico, since there aren’t addresses except in urban areas, the remainder of the island had to be geospatially configured to communicate “where” something was located. Digitizing Puerto Rico is a huge geospatial effort that would take years through normal government protocols and cost millions of dollars.

    Instead, by enlisting the support of the crowd, it was accomplished in weeks, proving the power if crowdsourcing operations.

    Crowdsourcing to the rescue. The power of the crowd was unlocked even more by using geoforms for filling out damage reports like bridge assessments, damaged roads, debris removal, etc. This allowed navigation apps to route around impassable areas saving time and ultimately lives. No more sending a rescue vehicle out only to find it can’t access the area because a tree is down, a bridge is collapsed, or flood waters are too high. Those delivering food could do so to where the people were.

    Interactive, real-time, geospatial, command and control forever changed dispatching. Instead of waiting for teams to return before retasking them with new assignments dispatching could be of done on the fly as survivors were identified. The nearest rescue craft with available space could be routed to the exact location.

    GIS allowed dispatchers to see where all the rescue teams were and how many survivors they had onboard and how many more they could take on. Data about each survivor was recorded allowing preparations for the arrival of anyone with special needs and the person’s information could immediately show up on a notification board that they had been found and rescued, important for family and friends to know.

    The information also helps with forecasting needs of shelters and the reporting of numbers to those in operational authority.

    Daily coordination calls were conducted over a variety of platforms with all interested and active participants. Important information was posted on a shared cloud drive. Slack, the peer to peer online collaboration platform was used so FEMA and the various groups were able to collaborate and keep the three different hurricane rescue operations segregated.

    Recovery continues. The recovery efforts continue in Houston, Florida, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. In efforts to increase the attention GIS played in mitigating damage from these disasters and the value of crowdsourced information FEMA hosted several events. The final event was held on Saturday, October 21, 2017. It was information about the situation on the ground in the multiple locations and the ongoing operations. It was also a celebration of the successes achieved during these crises; and, a tinge of sadness marked the event bringing to a close to some great working relationships.

    If you are interested, there are still ways to get involved no matter what your skillset or expertise. If you have a desire to help, there are opportunities either on scene in the theater of operation, or remotely working from your computer at home. Check with the organizations mentioned below. Even a couple hours of your time can help.

    What GIS offers next. GIS in the future of disaster response will make greater use of emerging technologies. Drones will fly preprogrammed paths ahead of a disaster if given enough time, and the imagery and the drone’s flight path will be stored. Then, immediately after the event passes drones will fly the same programmed path capturing imagery with the exact oblique and nadir angles as the original dataset.

    Change detection analysis can then be used to find the exact locations of change. This method will become increasingly valuable using high resolution 3D imagery point clouds and used in a change detection system.

    Geospatial artificial intelligence systems will identify the areas of greatest damage and assist by directing other resources such as mobile data signals to direct rescue operations towards possible survivors even using the last reported mobile data signal. It can direct human analysts to those specific areas that are inconclusive or require manual verification. This will increase analysis from several weeks to several days.

    That is in the future, the near future, perhaps next year’s hurricane season, or tornado season, or snowstorms this winter.

    This year, in total, there were 10 Atlantic hurricanes resulting in 431 deaths and an estimated $3.17 billion in damage; which by comparison, is 1/10th the number of casualties from Hurricane Katrina yet nearly twice the level of damage. It just so happens, I went through Hurricane Katrina living along the coast in Bay Saint Louis, Missouri, at the time where the eye the storm passed over. I tried to evacuate but being caught in a 13 hour traffic jam I was unable to outrun the storm. I personally experienced a category 4 hurricane. You may have picked that up in the opening of this article. Those experiences were very real. You might have also picked up my meteorological background from my days in the U.S Navy as a weather analyst.

    By the end of 2017, more than hurricanes had inflicted damage. Wildfires in the western U.S. killed another 36 people and destroyed 6,000 buildings. Now, with winter upon us, there will be snowstorms, and GIS will help with those recovery efforts as well.

    We are lucky to live in this day and age. Whether you are on the helping end of a disaster aiding in rescue and recovery, or on the receiving end being aided, GIS is supercharging the rescue efforts.

    Disaster response agencies and support groups

    Most of the above groups support all types of disaster response efforts and many do so throughout all regions of the world.

  • Independent Evaluation Demonstrates Benefits of SCALGO Flash Flood Mapping

    SCALGO announced that at the recent Florida Floodplain Managers Association Annual Conference, the engineering and environmental sciences consulting firm Jones Edmunds & Associates presented an evaluation of the SCALGO Flash Flood Mapping product.

     

     

    According to the announcement, using a detailed terrain model, SCALGO Flash Flood Mapping can be used to rapidly assess flood risk during extreme rain events on a local, regional or even national scale. Jones Edmunds compared SCALGO Flash Flood Mapping with the results of a recently completed Jones Edmunds flood study in Marion County, Florida, based on an advanced dynamic model (ICPR) used by the Florida authorities and listed by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as a nationally accepted hydraulic model. They found that despite a cost of under 5% and a significantly reduced production time, the Flash Flood Mapping results were close to the results of the advanced modelling and the same time significantly more detailed. Another main conclusion was that SCALGO Flash Flood Mapping is a very cost efficient way of screening large areas for high flood-risk areas where very detailed dynamic modelling is justified.

    SCALGO reports that its Flash Flood Mapping software can show how much rain has to fall during an extreme rain event before any given cell of a detailed (LiDAR based) raster terrain model is below water. Consequently, the mapping can be easily used to compute what part of each depression is below water after a given amount of rain, and thus effectively shows how water collects in depressions for all possible amounts of rain. The SCALGO Flash Flood Mapping product is being offered as a computation service. Based on the service and its national LIDAR-based terrain model, the major Danish engineering, environmental science and economics consulting company COWI has already successfully launched a new flash flood map product in Denmark, which is being used by several local governments as well as one of the five regional governments in Denmark (covering approximately 13.000 km²).