| Mapping Out a Plan for Disaster Preparedness
Local communities are using GIS as the foundation for disaster management
By Nancy Sappington Some thrill-seekers may get a kick out of chasing tornadoes or throwing a hurricane party but, for most of us, living through a natural disaster is no walk in the park-especially when human lives and property are at stake. Nevertheless, our chances of having to deal with an earthquake, fire, flood, or other destructive event have increased because the number and severity of natural disasters are on the rise.
During the last 10 years, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has spent $20 billion to help people repair and rebuild their communities following natural disasters. This figure does not include insurance company claims, lost business revenues and jobs, or other government contributions. The swelling population means the safety of more people is in jeopardy.
In response, FEMA is taking a proactive approach to changing the way the public deals with disasters. Project Impact: Building Disaster-Resistant Communities, is the nationwide initiative that FEMA launched in October 1997. It helps communities protect themselves from the devastating effects of natural disasters, with preventive actions that dramatically reduce disruption and loss.
This initiative focuses on promoting local programs that will prevent extensive loss of lives and property during disaster events. It is a commonsense approach based on three principles-preventive actions must be decided at the local level, private sector participation is vital, and long-term preventive efforts and investments are essential. Grassroots Disaster Management
Local agencies have detailed, hands-on knowledge of local issues, which makes them ideally suited to facilitate disaster planning, mitigation, and preparedness. For this reason, FEMA initially partnered with seven pilot communities across the country to help them become disaster-resistant.
Encouraged by the determined commitment of this pilot group, FEMA expanded the initiative. Currently, 120 communities throughout the United States are participating in Project Impact. FEMA is also recruiting other federal agencies and businesses into the program to help get the latest technology and mitigation practices implemented at the local level. Additionally, Project Impact is serving to empower communities as they pursue smart growth strategies, while strengthening the federal government's partnership with local government.
A common thread that weaves its way through every phase of Project Impact is GIS. Most of the data requirements for disaster management are of a spatial or geographic nature, and this makes GIS the logical tool. Identifying potential hazards, planning mitigation programs, and assisting in disaster preparedness activities are some of the critically important roles GIS has taken on for Project Impact communities.
In June 1999, ESRI signed on as a business partner for Project Impact. As part of the agreement, ESRI is providing multi-hazard maps and information to U.S. residents, business owners, schools, community groups, and local governments via the Internet. Users can access the data at ESRI's web-site (www.esri.com/hazards) or from the FEMA home page (www.fema.gov).
Anyone with Internet access can generate map images depicting flood, earthquake, hail storm, hurricane, tornado, or wind storm hazards throughout the U.S. Users can select an area of interest by ZIP code, city, or congressional district and, after they have made an online hazard map, they can e-mail it and print out a presentation-quality version of it. They can also change the current map view to any of the other hazards in the database.
These online maps will help communities assess their risks, identify hazards, and promote public awareness of mitigation planning and management. "ESRI has made a significant commitment to encourage the use of GIS in communities across the country so that they can take action to reduce disaster damage, and ESRI will provide them with the information that will assist in that effort," says James Lee Witt, director of FEMA. The Role of GIS Gets Bigger
Many Project Impact communities have already implemented GIS by using it to pinpoint hazards and evaluate the consequences of potential emergencies or disasters. Local agencies can compare maps of hazards such as earthquake faults, fire risk areas, or flood areas, to other map data. Locating streets, pipelines, hospitals, residential areas, power lines, and storage facilities in relation to known hazards on maps makes the process seamless. Lives, property, and environmental risks are readily apparent on maps.
"When you can see what's out there-schools, daycare centers, nursing homes, hospitals, emergency shelters, residential areas-and apply your known hazards, then you can really understand how to mitigate, prepare, respond, and recover," says Tom Malmay, Ouachita Parish, La., Civil Defense director. A Project Impact community, Ouachita Parish is using GIS to do groundbreaking work in emergency preparedness.
In February, ESRI awarded the Ouachita Parish Police Jury one of its Local Government Start-up Grants. The grant program awarded more than $10 million in GIS software, data, and online training to local government jurisdictions to assist them in developing and implementing GIS technology. Malmay and other civil defense officials in Ouachita used ArcView GIS, which was part of the grant, to map areas for a flood acquisition program.
Their Project Impact work also includes creating natural and technological disaster-response plans, calculating risk areas for floods, tornadoes, chemical spills and other catastrophes, and implementing long-term projects such as levee repairs and emergency response education programs. Quake Safe with GIS
Seattle, Wa., another Project Impact community, is taking an extensive look at infrastructure in the city to assess its ability to withstand earthquakes, landslides, and other destructive events. As part of Project Impact, a coalition of public and private partners has set out to develop an assessment of the vulnerability of Puget Sound's transportation system.
Another advantage of using GIS is that separate, but regional government agencies and other organizations can share information through databases. GIS provides a mechanism to centralize and visually display critical information for planning and mitigation and, in emergencies, this ready access to data resources can save time, money, and lives.
In the case of Seattle, King County GIS, which is part of the Project Impact team, collected Arc/Info data from the U.S. Geological Survey to generate a series of maps using ArcView GIS and its extension, Spatial Analyst. These maps show various aspects of transportation vulnerability such as liquefaction and ground acceleration. They also highlight the economic importance of the transportation system. GIS—Valuable Resource in New Assessment Tool
New Hanover County in North Carolina is susceptible to high winds, hurricanes, and extensive rains. With an eye toward limiting flood damage, the county became one of FEMA's pilot Project Impact communities in 1997. A first step was to identify and understand its hazard risks and vulnerabilities. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Coastal Services Center (CSC) has an ongoing effort to encourage and support coastal hazard mitigation. In a collaborative effort with FEMA and the New Hanover County Department of Emergency Management, NOAA's CSC provided technical assistance to New Hanover County's Project Impact initiative.
The overall goal for CSC involvement was to develop and implement a vulnerability assessment methodology that would be the foundation for identifying and prioritizing community-based hazard mitigation activities. The yearlong collaboration produced a CD-ROM, an informational aid designed to assist communities in their efforts to reduce disaster risks.
The process New Hanover County used for its risk assessment and hazard identification served as a guide for the design of the methodology. More importantly, its use of the methodology provided a case study of its applicability to local hazard mitigation planning.
Besides establishing the vulnerability assessment process, this CD-ROM illustrates the use of GIS technology as a valuable resource for conducting hazards-related analysis. One major feature is a section focusing on the use of spatial data for hazards planning, and other sections introduce relevant GIS and remote sensing applications as potential tools for supporting detailed hazards analysis.
Targeted for emergency managers, planners, building officials, and others interested in reducing hazard impacts, the CD-ROM provides a step-by-step guide for conducting community-wide risk and vulnerability assessments. The case study demonstrates the process for analyzing physical, social, economic, and environmental risks at the local level.
New Hanover County was able to support this mitigation planning effort with substantial available data. It had a GIS-based parcel inventory and data from hazard impacts associated with three recent major hurricane events in the county. County officials were interested in using their parcel-level database and GIS to expedite and improve the quality of the results of initial damage assessments.
They were specifically interested in designing a process that used a mapping interface to locate facility and parcel data, enter damage results, and automatically tally them at the end of the survey. Another requisite was to create a GIS application that inspectors and surveyors with no GIS experience could easily use. The CD-ROM describes the application they developed, and it includes a tutorial. Other localities can transfer and use this application with only minor modifications.
There are several options for accessing, viewing, and interacting with the data included in the CD-ROM-Web-browser viewing, ArcExplorer, or ArcView GIS. Web-browsing software and ArcExplorer software are included in the CD-ROM. ArcExplorer, ESRI's lightweight GIS data explorer, enables users to view, navigate, print, and perform some basic analysis with the data files included in the case study. ArcExplorer can work on its own with these local data sets, or as an Internet client to data and Internet map servers. There are five ArcExplorer project files on the CD-ROM. Users with ArcView GIS can access two customized ArcView project files included on this CD-ROM. About the Author:
Nancy Sappington is a marketing writer for ESRI and can be reached at 909-793-2853-ext1-2198.
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