Portals in the Storm

By the time a natural disaster hits, it's usually too late to set up the processes needed to adequately protect citizens and the environment. Florida officials have learned that lesson the hard way after their share of major storms-such as the devastating Hurricane Andrew in 1992-floods and other natural disasters. They know that surviving such a catastrophe is contingent on gathering the right people with the right knowledge, accessing and disseminating the right data, and using the right technology.

Now Florida coordinates all disaster preparation and recovery through its statewide emergency operations center, under the Division of Emergency Management. The center gathers geographic and other data from federal, state and local organizations to arm Florida's first responders with the information they need to protect citizens and infrastructure.

But even with their experience, Florida officials were taken aback by the speed and force with which hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne pounded the southeastern United States. They had to scramble to predict what was likely to occur so they could gather and deploy the appropriate rescue teams and supplies.

The months-long effort to collect the data that is critical to such analysis was the result of two key components-a knowledgeable geographic information systems coordinator and effective GIS technology. Without them, the state wouldn't have weathered the recent rash of hurricanes nearly as well as it did. The coordinator runs the emergency operations center, supervising analysts who use GIS software to track storms and to assess their damage. After analyzing the information collected, the GIS coordinator determines what actions should be taken, including pinpointing high-priority areas and communities, dispatching rescue teams, and supplying food and medicine.

Leading the effort was Carla Boyce, pulled at the last minute from her job as a GIS coordinator and environmental specialist for Florida's Environmental Protection Department to replace the emergency operations center's GIS coordinator, who had recently left the position.

To prepare for the pounding Florida was likely to receive, Boyce put her training garnered from years as a firefighter and paramedic to good use. She knew that to be able to assess damage before it occurred and determine which populations and areas were at highest risk, she had to gather as much geographic data from as many sources as possible. She first went to federal sources, pulling real-time data from the U.S. Census Bureau as well as high-resolution imagery and other data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Weather Service and the U.S. Geological Survey.

The center gathered information from state and county organizations, including the Florida departments of Environmental Protection and Health, and the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, among others.

Before the hurricanes, the team turned to FEMA's HAZUS-MH risk assessment software powered by the ArcGIS engine from ESRI of Redlands, Calif., to model potential damage and plan its response.

During Hurricane Charley in August, the team used HAZUS-MH to determine how many elderly people and young children might be affected by the storm. "When Charley was headed over areas with huge populations of people 65 and older, who were economically disadvantaged and couldn't afford to evacuate, we were able to order truckloads of Ensure and other products. But when the storm changed and went to an area with an increased [0- to 5-year-old] population, we were able to catch it soon enough to redirect our efforts to send baby formula and diapers," Boyce says.

The team used GIS tools to evaluate the data it collected before and during the storm. The center mostly used ArcGIS, but MapGuide from Autodesk Inc. of San Rafael, Calif., was the backbone for Web sites providing flood maps, evacuation routes and shelter locations. MapGuide helped emergency workers monitor evacuation routes among flooding or debris, says Jon Hansen, Autodesk's manager of emergency response solutions.

To combine other information and intelligence, "We used the duct tape/sledgehammer method," Boyce says, "where you sledgehammer the Lotus Notes Tracker system into Microsoft Access by way of Excel and duct tape it all together so it talks to the ESRI software." The team also used ESRI's ArcPad StreetMap and XMap software from DeLorme of Yarmouth, Maine, to demographically characterize various locations.

This array of technology enabled the team to determine which populations were in Charley's path-especially critical segments such as the elderly or sick. The information was used to create maps for emergency teams. Each team was assigned a particular issue, such as health, which focuses on hospitals, nursing homes and at-risk populations.

The emergency operations center's efforts didn't end when the hurricanes abated. In fact, the team put considerable time and effort into using GIS technologies to handle the aftermath. The team analyzed information from the National Weather Service, water management districts, FEMA and other sources to assess damage and determine how to handle floods and other effects of the storms.

Boyce says she has learned quite a bit about what to do-and what not to do-next time. Trying to ensure the health, status and source of all data prior to a disaster and using downtime to search for missing data pieces and produce maps is critical, Boyce says.

But she wants to coordinate statewide disaster efforts with the counties, many of which operated independently during this year's rash of storms. Pinellas County, for example, operated from its own emergency operations center, identifying evacuation routes, shelter locations, flood predictions and power outages.

Without GIS technology, the Florida emergency operations center's job would have been much more difficult, if not impossible, Boyce says.

"The need for a concerted GIS/information management response was critical to serving the needs of victims and potential victims, as well as providing natural resource protection, water quality protection, and assessment of potential and actual impacts," she says.