GPS World

Tag: Hurricane Sandy

  • 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.

  • Storm surge maps: Saving more lives during hurricane season

    Storm surge maps: Saving more lives during hurricane season

    Storm Surge in downtown New York City in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. (Photo: USACE)
    Storm Surge in downtown New York City in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. (Photo: USACE)

    By JoAnne Castagna
    U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

    Hurricane Sandy led to one of the largest-scale U.S. evacuations in recent history, according to Edward Schneyer, director of Emergency Preparedness, Suffolk County (N.Y.) Office of Emergency Management.

    “During Sandy, we rescued 250 people from their flooded homes, evacuated two major hospitals and several adult care homes,” Schneyer said.
    Schneyer was able to do this effectively because his agency uses storm surge maps created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New York District. Storm surge is when a significant amount of water is pushed from the sea onto the land caused by a hurricane.

    The maps provide emergency managers in hurricane-prone states with an understanding of storm surge potential that could occur for worst-case Category 1 to 4 storms, identifying areas from which people should evacuate if faced with the threat of storm surge.

    The Army Corps is updating these maps with higher resolution modeling and topography performed by NOAA’s National Hurricane Center’s Storm Surge Unit, so agencies will have more accurate information to educate the public — reducing risk to themselves and their property.

    Hazard Analysis

    “Historically, 49 percent of human causalities from hurricanes are due to storm surge,” said Donald E. Cresitello, the Corps’ Hurricane Evacuation Study program manager for the New York District. “Other impacts like riverine flooding due to rainfall, falling trees due to high winds, and indirect impacts like carbon monoxide poisoning and electrocution can cause deaths. The development of these maps is the first step in the hazard analysis for the hurricane evacuation study process.”

    The “New York Hurricane Evacuation Study Hurricane Surge Inundation Maps” are being produced in collaboration with the Army Corps’ New England and Baltimore Districts and provided to emergency managers. The Army Corps also guides emergency managers on using the maps in the decision-making software 
HURREVAC (Hurricane Evacuation), developed by Sea Island Software for the National Hurricane Program.

    “Agency officials can use these maps to help reduce risk to the public,” Cresitello said. “They can use them for evacuation planning, to redefine their hurricane evacuation zones, identify where shelters should be located and identify where assets should be staged prior to impact from a storm.”

    The new maps will not only show the extent of inland storm surge, but also the depth of the water — in ranges of feet — during different categories of storms, enabling emergency managers to better focus limited resources.

    “In the initial stages of a response, our recovery resources are limited, especially for an event the size of Sandy. If resources are dispatched to areas that were not impacted, valuable time is lost mobilizing and reassigning those resources,” Schneyer said.

    At press time, Schneyer’s agency is entering information from the maps into an interactive program viewable on its county’s website, so the public can see whether their home is in a storm surge zone and which designated shelter is nearby. During Sandy, people who should have evacuated were stranded and faced dangers such as electrocution from downed power lines and fires from gas leaks.

    “This very valuable resource is an excellent tool for public education, emergency management planning, and emergency preparedness in general,” Schneyer said.

    Connecticut shoreline: This example of a storm surge map shows the extent of surge that can be expected as a result of a worst-case scenrio that combines hurricane landfall location, forward speed and direction for each hurricane category. (Credit: USACE)
    Connecticut shoreline: This example of a storm surge map shows the extent of surge that can be expected as a result of a worst-case scenrio that combines hurricane landfall location, forward speed and direction for each hurricane category. (Credit: USACE)

    Using GIS to Create Higher Resolution Maps

    Geographic information systems (GIS), which capture, store, analyze and display location information, are being used to create higher resolution storm surge maps.

    To create the maps, the Corps of Engineers uses the SLOSH model (Sea, Lake, Overland Surges from Hurricanes) provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The SLOSH data is layered over lidar-based topography in Esri ArcGIS software.

    “To come up with the actual depth of water through GIS, we are overlaying the data out of NOAA’s SLOSH model and subtracting out the ground elevations using digital elevation models and coming up with an actual depth of water in feet,” said Donald E. Cresitello, USACE Hurricane Evacuation Study program manager for the State of New York, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New York District.

    JoAnne Castagna is a public affairs specialist and writer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New York District.

  • Logistics, GIS and Disaster Response, Post-Sandy

    An exercise in planning for months proves timely in light of Hurricane Sandy

    By Art Kalinski

    I was going to write about the increasing presence of social media at GEOINT 2012, but I’ll cover that next month since Hurricane Sandy made an exercise I attended last week more significant in its timeliness.

    The Disaster Response Integrative Logistics Exercise was a joint effort of the Institute for Defense & Business and Lockheed Martin. Heading up the effort was retired U.S. Ambassador David Litt of the IDB and Corey Cook of Lockheed Martin. The almost week-long event was held at the Lockheed Martin Lighthouse located in Suffolk, Virginia, near Norfolk. The 65,000-square-foot high-technology facility is designed for experimentation and prototyping using analysis, modeling and simulation. It’s a reconfigurable command and control operations laboratory that permits participants to test and analyze concepts in a gaming environment.

    The stated purpose of the disaster response exercise was: “Given the nature, frequency, location and severity of disasters, inter-organizational collaboration – to include the private sector – is becoming increasingly critical to the efficiency and effectiveness of logistics in disaster responses.”  The exercise involved more than a 100 participants from the private sector, government agencies, non-profit organizations, and military services. Lou Kratz, Vice president and managing director, Logistics and Sustainment, Corporate Engineering & Technology for Lockheed Martin, stated that “Today’s crisis response efforts generally struggle with effective logistics collaboration among the multiple public and private stakeholders engaged. With our 21st-century logistics capabilities and global resources available from the public sector and private organizations, together we can develop solutions that will help our communities and businesses recover more quickly and effectively after a crisis.”

    And collaborate we did! The list of participants was quite extensive and quite diverse. To give you a sense of the attendees, here is a partial list of organizations represented:

    • commercial companies included DHL, Maersk, Florida Power and Light, Fluor, Home Depot, Walmart
    • federal government agencies included FEMA, DHS, GSA, HHS, USAID, State Department
    • military organizations included NAVSUP, NORTHCOM, USACE, USAF, USMC, USN, SOUTHCOM, National Defense University, USCG, NORTHCOM
    • NGOs included United Nations agencies, the Red Cross, Operation Blessing, Catholic Relief Services and many more.

    Conference attendance was significantly impacted by Hurricane Sandy, which also highlighted its timeliness.  FEMA, USAID, USACE, and the Red Cross, who were confirmed attendees and were instrumental in the development of the DRIL exercise, were deployed to Hurricane Sandy just hours before the start of the event. Fortunately, attendance to the DRIL by multiple organizations and substitute personnel was still robust, allowing for a highly successful exercise.

    Some of the exercise objectives included defining and understanding different agency logistics capabilities, leadership structures, institutional and regulatory obstacles, differences in cultures, missions and operating procedures while developing metrics to evaluate performance in disaster response efforts. To accomplish the objectives, all the participants were organized into four integrated teams that were then separated at times into functional teams and then reassembled with representatives speaking for each team to the entire group of attendees.

    Since this was the first exercise of its type, it was a learning experience for all involved and focused on the basics of personnel interactions and group consensus.  Each participant had access to his or her own computer, common computer resources and pre-developed exercise parameters. There were many artificial assumptions presented to the teams, and the team members made even more assumptions and guesses as they worked through the individual scenarios. Most of the exercise consisted of reviewing the effects of Category 5 hurricanes hitting the Dominican Republic, South Florida and Virginia, so there was a domestic as well as international impact. We participated in our groups, listening to individual team members with specialized knowledge and experience, then prioritized the delivery of needed resources and services. As the exercises ramped up, there were many animated discussions in which basics such as water, food, shelter, medical, electric power and transportation infrastructure were prioritized and justification documented.

    I made several observations to myself as the exercises progressed. First, there are definite cultural differences between federal, military, NGO and commercial agencies. Not bad differences, just different. Second, individual personalities can steer the group dynamics and outcomes. And third, situational awareness is critical to effective disaster response. Geospatial technology was not part of this first exercise, but would clearly have been valuable to provide a common operational picture. That level of complexity would not have been practical for this initial exercise, but it does lead me to the “Solutions” room next to the main exercise area.

    In a space adjacent to the main exercise room was a “Solutions” room that showcased potentially helpful technologies. The room was open to exercise participants toward the tail end of the week. It consisted of a diverse assortment of commercial and government solutions that addressed some of the issues  the teams struggled with during the week. Examples include a new computer-based system developed by the Navy Supply Systems Command (NAVSUP) that is similar to the commercial Kayak flight search system. The Transportation Exploitation Tool (TET) was explained to me by Greg Butler, division director, NAVSUP GLS Transportation, who initiated the effort. He explained that all too often resources are wasted flying parts or personnel on dedicated aircraft that are duplicate trips of other aircraft or ships with available space traveling to the same location. The new geospatial network scheduling system optimizes transportation resources across all branches of service and already saved the Navy $23M on a $750k investment.

    Lockheed Martin displayed several technologies, including communications and data management technologies. One of the most interesting was its Hybrid Aircraft that was initially developed for military use. However, its ability to transport equipment and supplies efficiently to undeveloped sites while providing a persistent platform for communications and to collect and download imagery makes it a valuable asset for emergency response activities.  To learn more, view the following video.

    A representative from NATO explained the NATO Civil-Military Fusion Center, including a map library and custom services. Several exhibitors demonstrated the use of social media, which can be a very valuable and timely source of information to build situational awareness during emergencies. A company I work with, Soft Power Solutions, integrates GIS resources such as Google, USGS, ortho and oblique imagery married to geographically placed social media to build situational awareness that is quite robust. It was especially dramatic that during demonstrations, a 7.2 earthquake was reported off the coast of Guatemala.  One could easily see the growing number of tweets that almost immediately confirmed the earthquake and level of damage. Here is a ShakeMap generated by USGS within minutes of the earthquake showing the level of impact on the Guatemalan coast (shown in yellow).

    One of the exercise objectives was to develop metrics that would evaluate performance in disaster response efforts. There were many metrics developed that one would expect – roads open, electricity restored, utilities restored, etc. However, the one informal metric that was developed through personal experience of Florida emergency responders was the “Waffle House” metric. Waffle House is a ubiquitous restaurant chain with locations throughout the southeast. The Florida responders observed that driving from one county’s Waffle House to another open Waffle House was a good indicator that the location was in OK shape.  Since a Waffle House needs minimal staffing and utilities compared to larger restaurants, it was a good indicator as to how bad conditions were in the location. Perhaps someone will develop a “Waffle House Open” type GIS layer as a metric to “okayness.”  Sounds like a good thesis for a GIS graduate student.

    Everyone who participated was enthusiastic about conducting another similar exercise. Planning is already underway to make that happen. I, for one, feel that this kind of exercise can have a significant positive impact on future disasters because it builds face-to-face relationships that are so valuable during actual events. I’m going to do what I can to help with a geospatial aspect in future exercises.

  • CoreLogic: Top 25 Zip Codes in NYC at Risk of Property Damage from Hurricane Sandy

     

    Note to Readers: The CoreLogic storm-surge analysis provided below was developed based on the projected path of Hurricane Sandy as of 12:30 p.m. ET Monday, October 29.

    CoreLogic has released data showing the top 25 zip codes in New York City-Northern New Jersey-Long Island that are at risk of exposure to residential property damage from hurricane-driven storm-surge flooding when Hurricane Sandy hits the Atlantic coast later today. Massapequa, located on the South Shore of Long Island, holds the top spot with more than $4.6 billion in total structure value at risk.

    In a report issued Saturday, CoreLogic also provided an estimate of the total number of residential properties at risk among the coastal Mid-Atlantic states, assuming Sandy hits the coast as a Category 1 hurricane. Within that seven-state region, nearly 284,000 total residential properties valued at almost $88 billion stand at risk:

    According to CoreLogic, the number of residential properties in eight major metro areas and their respective potential exposure to damage are as follows:

    CoreLogic reports that hurricane-driven storm-surge flooding can cause significant property damage when high winds and low pressure causes water to amass inside the storm, releasing a powerful rush over land when the hurricane moves on shore. The CoreLogic analysis measures damage from storm surge and does not include potential damage from wind and rain associated with hurricanes.

    To view a map showing hurricane-driven storm-surge risk through Google Earth, visit here. To download the map as a KML file, visit here. Static maps depicting storm surge in the Northeast are available upon request.

    For more information on CoreLogic storm-surge methodology, data and analysis, download a copy of the more in-depth 2012 CoreLogic Storm Surge report at http://cl.internal.cvic.com/corelogic/url.php?cin=2d2e1y1w2c2c.