GIS: Bringing disaster management down to earth

As emergency managers around the country struggle to find ways to improve their ability to prepare for, mitigate and manage the response to emergencies and disasters, one requirement is paramount: Any successful strategy requires rapid access to incident, infrastructure and environmental information.

The problem is, crucial information is often unavailable or undigitized or hasn’t been centralized.

Now, with the spread of space-age geospatial information systems, emergency response and homeland security agencies are beginning to centralize infrastructure data from various public safety and planning departments to provide first responders with near– real-time access to critical information that’s needed to save lives, their own included.

First responders are generally not afraid of much, but they do fear what they don’t know. Entering unfamiliar surroundings or buildings during emergency incidents brings a sobering realization that existing technologies don’t provide adequate information about building layout and navigation.

GIS changes that, and enhanced situational awareness is the principal spinoff.

GIS allows emergency responders to generate more accurate tactical pre-plans and respond more quickly and effectively across the entire range of emergencies, whether terrorist, accidental or natural.

For example, Ronnie Coleman, past president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, says that in the past evacuation planners knew two things: how many people there were to move and how many roads there were out of town.

“GIS goes much deeper than mapping,” he says. GIS allows planners to document such things as the age of the affected population; whether they are likely to provide their own transportation; where the elderly, handicapped and children are; and the number of vehicles a road can tolerate during any circumstance.

Coleman says any department that doesn’t have GIS in their tool kit is operating with one hand tied behind their back. “GIS doesn’t make the decision for you, but people who understand GIS make better decisions than those who don’t.”

Homeland security linchpin
There is currently an effort under way at the federal level to understand what constitutes critical infrastructure, not just the facilities themselves but what interdependencies each facility shares with other key facilities that have national or regional significance.

This interdependent connectivity is expected to emerge in the next generation of the National Asset Database, a key component in DHS’s National Infrastructure Protection Plan. This repository is meant to combine multiple commercial and federal infrastructure databases, vulnerability assessment tools and libraries, intelligence and threat reporting databases, and geospatial tools into a single integrated Web-based portal. GIS is the data-mining mule for this effort.

Situational awareness relies on static data (whether from high-resolution imagery or GIS vector layers of pipes, sewers or other infrastructure components), then fusing that with real-time information (such as asset locations and environmental variables), says Russ Johnson, manager of pubic safety and homeland security for esri, a major GIS vendor <www.esri.com>.

The fusion of spatially based dynamic data with static GIS data then begins to create situational awareness by combining disparate information and making it actionable.
“I don’t know how you could do that without GIS technology,” Johnson says.

The vast majority of this information is spatial and can be fed into a GIS and mapped. When information on life hazards, property and critical infrastructures is combined with risk and probability, emergency managers can begin to formulate mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery plans.

“You can collect all the information that you’d like about each of those facilities and how they’re connected and hand it to someone in a book, or you can let someone visualize it through a map to see not only where the critical infrastructure is, but what are the other related spatial issues surrounding it that might increase vulnerability,” Johnson explains.

All disasters are local
The entire spectrum of government and emergency planning can benefit from access to GIS.

Law enforcement and fire-rescue involve processes pertaining to planning, code enforcement, public education, training, response, command and control, and administrative activities.

“GIS is a tool that can be used for all facets of public service,” says Chief Don Oliver of Wilson (N.C.) Fire and Rescue Services. He says GIS reduces time and increases productivity and decision accuracy.

Examples of GIS uses for local public safety agencies include map production, incident resolution (mobile GIS) and department-level analysis.

GIS also serves public health. The Public Health Surveillance Team in North Carolina, for example, has established a mobile GIS capability to provide Rapid Needs Assessment capabilities statewide. It’s the first to enable a state public health agency to perform rnas in response to disasters without help from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. rna is a methodology developed by CDC and the World Health Organization for collecting health needs field data during disasters.

GIS seems to be spreading fastest in the first responder communities.

Since any community’s street information, political boundaries and infrastructure are in an almost constant state of change, the most efficient means of making fire and police personnel aware of those changes is by regularly producing up-to-date maps.

“Storing all this information in a GIS, and making map documents that are linked to these data guarantees any map printed will be accurate and up-to-date,” says Oliver.

GIS data such as building footprints, hydrant information, address points, and street centerlines are used in a mobile environment to help responders locate incidents en route, identify flow ratings of the nearest fire hydrants, or accurately decide where to place dams across a storm water line to stop the spread of a hazardous material spill, to name a few uses.

Time and motion
A mobile GIS can also be used to link important documents to the features they represent on the map.

Wilson Fire and Rescue Services, for instance, hyperlinks Wilson city building footprints to the department’s collection of pre-incident preplan documents stored on each of their laptop computers. One click on the polygon representing a specific business or institution’s footprint, and the associated preplan document pops open.

“The preplan is therefore in the field, where it is needed, not filed in a cabinet somewhere,” Oliver says.

GIS also lets police and fire departments map incidents historically, allowing agencies to analyze call density by type and district. Response comparison analyses can be performed to determine how quickly police or fire units, from department-wide, to station, down to shift level, are responding to calls, compared with a predetermined response time standard.

“Using information such as this, combined with call-density analysis, can help make decisions such as whether a new station is needed, where it should be located, or whether the apparent need for a new station could be resolved by reallocating existing resources,” Oliver says.

Making the most of GIS
He says GIS is giving people the tools and information they need to make timelier, more informed decisions. However, he also says it’s important that GIS be used in routine decision-making and not stockpiled for major disasters. This way, agencies are already essentially using GIS for domestic preparedness. Further, they will be prepared to use these tools no matter what type of scenario they are facing.

“Using GIS only during so-called major events will ensure the technology is not useful when needed,” Oliver says.

He says success with GIS depends on ongoing training, as well as listening to feedback provided by end-users, ensuing that they’re presented with the data they need in a format they can use.

“The level of success in any endeavor will be indicated by the level of end-user training and whether or not the tools provide the information the end-user needs to accomplish their mission,” he says.

GIS doesn’t do this alone. It has an inside accomplice.

Computer-aided design provides the same mapping detail for what’s inside a structure as GIS does for what’s outside.

“CAD lets us preplan a response, to see exactly what’s inside a structure before we send police or firefighters in, all the floor plans, where the building infrastructure is, sewer and water lines, and it lets police tactical teams and fire and rescue crews know the best route in and out, that a certain hallway leads to this office or that electrical closet, where subjects may be hiding or where hostages may be held, whether terrorists get into the HVAC system or use the system to spread gas,” says Jon Hansen, a retired assistant chief of Oklahoma City Fire-Rescue and manager of emergency response solutions for Autodesk, a major player in the GIS space <www.autodesk.com>.

He says it’s imperative that emergency managers be able to see a building internal infrastructure in as much detail as GIS supplies of the surrounding area.

Getting there from here
Obstacles to broader adoption of GIS come in cultural, financial and political forms.
“Any time you’re dealing with political boundaries, turf issues will arise,” says Chris Reynolds, professor of disaster management at American Military University <www.amu.apus.edu> and a battalion chief with Hillsborough County (Fla.) Fire Rescue.
One of the things the National Response Plan (a DHS all-hazards approach to enhance the United States’ ability to manage domestic incidents) is trying to address is the mistaken idea that an event is a single-jurisdiction incident.

“It’s not,” Reynolds says. “It’s regional.”

A GIS could even be an instrument for reconciling long-standing public safety turf battles, since it houses common information everyone needs.
“Whether you’re a manager planning emergency response or the public works group designing a sewer infrastructure, you’re all using the same information and therefore communicating better,” Hansen says.

Coleman also sees the development of regional databases and the sharing of information across political boundaries as having a positive effect on interagency cooperation. He believes that barriers to broader use of GIS are more a philosophical issue, where level of awareness is a contributing factor in whether departments are advocates for GIS solutions.

“I’ve seen situations where the city has a huge GIS capacity and the fire department doesn’t participate,” he says.

Next challenge
GIS has historically been about data. Most of the products in the market are designed to acquire, store, edit, model or analyze geospatial data and turn it into decision-support information. While GIS currently does an excellent job of amassing and presenting existing information crucial to first responders, the information is static; the data presented to field personnel does not get updated once responders leave the station.

“This information is certainly useful, but the next challenge for GIS is moving towards presentation of more dynamic data in the field,” Oliver says.

Emerging trends within law enforcement and emergency management include a move toward a common tactical operational picture.

“Common” in this sense means it must be a shared planning and execution environment that enables decision-makers and responders to collaborate in real time using historical GIS data updated with live video, up-to-the-moment imagery and the latest information.

“Tactical” means that the capabilities of this operational picture environment are dynamic, current and evolving along with the action on the ground.

This trend is leveraging traditional GIS, Web-based 3-D data dissemination and visualization technology, as well as e-911, Voice over IP, and tracking using radio frequency identification and the Global Positioning System.

Oliver says a simple example of this type of application would not only show incident location but also all responding resources. This information could then be overlaid on the existing static information. Further expansion would allow tracking of individual personnel as they became engaged in the response.

“Leveraged in conjunction with existing static data, tools such as location-based services could be used to notify personnel if they are nearing a known hazard or key piece of infrastructure,” Oliver says. “This would be particularly useful if individuals could be tracked inside of structures.”

There’s more. These tools could theoretically then be married to remote-sensing information that would allow personnel to monitor evolving ground conditions. Oliver says conditions to be monitored might include weather condition, such as wind speed and direction (useful during gas releases or toxic spills) or event details like hot spots in a wildland fire.

“These are a few possible examples, but the real power of these concepts can only be revealed by allowing the first responder to define what dynamic information would be most valuable in a given scenario,” Oliver says.

The marriage of GIS, GPS, remote sensing and wireless communications will provide the foundation from which these new tools will be built. The technologies are already in the marketplace.”

“Location-based services are already being used by cell phone companies and car manufacturers,” Oliver says. “The key for public safety is to take these technologies and concepts and mold them to fit their needs.”