Traditional GIS applications have long been a trusted tool of the trade for professionals working in the field of emergency management. Recent advances have led to a greater capability to undertake a holistic approach to incident management utilising much more than the conventional knowledge derived from static maps and GIS silos.

Location Intelligence is empowering emergency managers to be better prepared, to respond in a more informed manner, and undertake recovery operations guided by a clear understanding of the situation. Applications providing location intelligence are indispensable to emergency workers as they provide the ability to display a large amount of information shown via an intuitive medium and location-enabled perspective. The end result is faster collaboration and interoperability between emergency management systems, providing confidence in the decision making process. Let’s review the role of location intelligence during different phases of an event.

Prevent and Prepare

We can do well to heed the saying “Praemonitus praemunitus” or “forewarned is forearmed”. Prudent use of location intelligence helps prepare agencies through the ability to model future events and provide critical information to management personnel tasked with decision-making in times of crisis.

An example of an organisation successfully implementing this strategy today is City of Casey Council in Victoria. The Casey Alert Local Manager (CALM) system displays infrastructure related data over demographic and other Council specific content within a map-based interface in real time. This enables managers to be better informed in times of crisis. Far from being a map frozen in time, the CALM system allows operators to formulate emergency scenarios, dynamically generate statistics of population impacted, infrastructure affected, the coverage zones of response travel time, as well as overlay triage and safe zones within the mapping interface. 

Jem Belcher from City of Casey says “It’s a case of a picture being worth a thousand words. Once we identify the location and immediate boundaries of the emergency, we can introduce overlays that superimpose specific information on the displayed map.”

Modelling of disaster situations is only successful if the models contain an appropriate level of “real world” data to produce meaningful outcomes from the modelling process. Thus the collection of field data is a valuable component to the planning process. Without real world data – for example public infrastructure, utilities and transport links - emergency managers will not have confidence in the results from any modelling. In addition, collection of field data and the storage of the data in a robust infrastructure asset management system provides innumerable benefits to an organisation charged with maintenance of those assets. Once a luxury, infrastructure asset management systems are now seen as mission critical solutions by councils and infrastructure owners alike. Whilst the primary purpose of collecting the information is for core infrastructure asset management processes such as inspection and maintenance management, we can see from the experience of our customers that the system also facilitates rapid response and recovery assistance in the field in times of emergency - a key emergency management resource. 

 But, there is much more to this story. The capability to analyse specific asset-based data and run a risk analysis to determine a calculated probability of failure and the risk factor imposed on the environment for each asset is key. The analysis is based on a matrix combination of an asset’s ‘current state’ data and risk model data. Risk analysis results can be used to identify the mitigation activity required which may be recorded, along with other information about the activity. This information provides organisations with a view on risk classifications, consequences of failure, associated consequence severities and can also take into account an asset’s condition or age. Such a multi-faceted approach to emergency planning and risk management can only put infrastructure owners in a more confident position to respond when the need arises.

As we have demonstrated, preparation underpinned by location intelligence provides organisations responsible for emergency management with the ability to offer improved protection of the community, through a greater understanding of the people and their environment. 

Respond

When an emergency incident occurs, responsible agencies routinely use applications containing location intelligence capabilities to ensure that appropriate resources are effectively deployed. For example, Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) systems are used by Triple 0 operators frequently to capture incident details and plan a response. In an emergency, every second counts. 

A quick response is inextricably linked to location intelligence; without the precise location of the incident and of the necessary response agents, an operator is not able to confidently make life-saving decisions. Finding a precise location is harder than it sounds. Anyone who has had to deal with address information understands the challenge determining a true and correct address. Complexities like unofficial locality alias, street name alias, private estate names and gated community address structures are just some examples of what gets in the way of resolving the location of a crisis. Exhaustive, quality location data is needed to address these issues. 

This point is not lost on those responsible for saving lives. Glenn Walker, Chief Information Officer, Queensland Department of Community Safety states, “Queensland's Department of Community Safety is unique in Australia. The agency provides services covering all phases of emergency and disaster management - prevention, preparedness, response and recovery - delivered by fire, ambulance and Emergency Management Queensland across a single portfolio. Pitney Bowes Software’s data solutions assist the Department to deploy an information overlay that plays a critical role in our business processes. The high quality data assists in delivering timely emergency services accurately to the required location.”

But, what about community engagement? Another critical component of emergency response is public communication. Even here location is the best perspective to employ when relaying emergency communications to the general public. For example, the ability to relate to the location of a fire in the context of your local neighbourhood can only best be conveyed through the use of a map. 

Location intelligence brings together multiple datasets that might otherwise have been disparate and uncorrelated into a seamless, single, easy to use interface. For example the Firelocator application, developed by Pitney Bowes, displays information from multiple fire agencies simultaneously putting the power in the hands of end users providing them real time access to information that is drawn together in an easy to access format. The application is location centric and provides users with dynamic risk information that can quickly and easily be related to their locations of interest. 

Image of FireLocator in action.

Recover

While the duration of an emergency incident varies — it may last seconds, minutes, hours, or even days — something in common for larger incidents is the time needed for recovery will be many times longer. The value of location intelligence during the recover phase is clearly demonstrated by widespread adoption of location intelligent systems within commercial and government organisations involved in these operations. From police to council to multi-national insurance agencies, the basic value of location intelligence is undeniable as organisations seek to understand where the incident occurred, who was impacted and the location of resources required to bring about the recovery.

Reflecting on the contribution of Location Intelligence to the recovery efforts following the 2009 Victorian bushfires, Frank Blanchfield, a coordinator of the MAPS Volunteer Group said “In the situation of a major crisis, MAPS can provide additional resources to map the areas emergency services are working in. Mapping is a key technology for managing bushfires and other emergencies, before during and after a major incident.” 

Location offers essential contextual clarity necessary to help bind the efforts of multiple recovery agencies. Is that essential? Of course it is if you agree that the rapid restoration of infrastructure is a key element of the recover process. This can only occur with reliable infrastructure location information readily available to decision makers and response crews. This was most recently demonstrated with Pitney Bowes’ involvement in the Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management’s flood recovery activities across Queensland.

Many organisations are constantly trying to deal with scarce resources and limited funding to plan, respond and recover from any emergency. While some have already invested in location intelligence capabilities, the difference we see is how well it is exploited to drive a robust, holistic, confident emergency management strategy. 

Volunteers are needed to classify images of Hurricane Sandy to help FEMA.  The site is using open source image sorting tool MapMill, created from code developed  Jeffrey Warren of the Public Laboratory for Open Technology (PLOT) and Science and modified by Kate Chapman (the Acting Executive Director for Humanitarian OpenStreetMap) and Schuyler Erle (one of the authors of O'Reilly's Mapping Hacks and also of Humanitarian OpenStreetMap).

Upon viewing each image, volunteers are asked to make a determination if the image shows light, moderate, or heavy damage to buildings and infrastructure.  The descriptions for each category:

• Green: Light or No Damage: shingles or doors missing.

• Yellow: Moderate Damage: moderate to heavy damage to one or more structures, roads, and infrastructure. Some structures may be only lightly damaged.

• Red: Severe Damage: heavy damage to multiple structures, or if the area is still flooded.

The site is set up for rapid image evaluation with a basic three category determination.  The site is set up for keyboard shortcuts so hitting '1' will select light, '2' for moderate, '3' for severe, and '0' for a new window.

All of the images from Hurricane Sandy can be browsed here.  Over 300 volunteers have helped categorize over 560 images to date.  The collective results from the crowdsourcing effort will be used to help the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) sort the images.  The images were captured of New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts by CAP on October 31, 2012.  Public input on sorting images will help FEMA allocate its resources to the worst damaged areas affected by Hurricane Sandy.

Visit: http://sandy.hotosm.org to start sorting images.  Even helping to categorize just one or two images will help in the collective effort.  Also, be sure to pass along information about this effort to help spread the word.  If you want to select images for a specific area, lick on the grid link to access a gridded map.  Click on the grid for the area you are interested in viewing images for.

Hurricane Sandy crowdsourced image classification effort.

Courtesy of The National Post

Stripped of its bustle and mostly cut off from the world, New York was left wondering Tuesday when its particular way of life — carried by subway, lit by skyline and powered by 24-hour deli — would return.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the power company said it could be several days before the lights come on for hundreds of thousands of people plunged into darkness by what was once Hurricane Sandy.

And Bloomberg said it could be four or five days before the subway, which suffered the worst damage in its 108-year history, is running again. All 10 of the tunnels that carry New Yorkers under the East River were flooded.

A look at how events unfolded in New York:

Text by Colleen Long and Erin McClam of The Associated Press

Stuck inside awaiting Sandy? Check out these beautiful, useful maps and images of the storm that's currently bearing down on the East Coast.

With Hurricane Sandy hastening its stroll up the East Coast, media coverage of the impending FRANKENSTORM has reached fever pitch. Some meteorologists are calling it “an unprecedented and bizarre” storm of the century. Others say that’s “shameless fear mongering.” The rest of us are reacting like this.

Whichever school of hurricane prep you ascribe to, all eyes (human and machine alike) are on the East Coast today, which has made for some interesting visualizations of the storm. It used to be that meteorologists made a “best guess” using data culled from weather balloons, which gleaned broad, imprecise insights into storm paths. In turn, evacuations were far broader than they are today. Thanks to satellite data, advanced modeling software, and broadcasting platforms that update in real time, today’s network news coverage unfolds in the moment, at times feeling more like a football game than an emergency broadcast.

If you’ve reached your capacity for media hype about Sandy, avert your eyes now (maybe by peeping these GIFs of hurricane coverage clichés). Otherwise, check out a shameless roundup of the most interesting images, maps, and videos of the 'cane, below.

Dawn to Dusk: Hurricane Sandy, October 28, 2012, Super Rapid Scan

1. 3-D MAP FROM THE TRMM SATELLITE 

NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission is a joint US/Japanese mission to measure (as the name suggests) tropical rainfall and cloud heights. The 15-year-old satellite supplied the data for this image, which models the storm in 3-D. Despite the low-res image, it’s pretty cool, since it demonstrates some of the weirder aspects of Sandy. For example, the red “rain band” contains strong independent storm cells which will pummel the coast before Sandy herself makes landfall. Meanwhile, the wisps of cloud at the upper left-hand corner hint at the arctic storm coming down the line, which could pose the real threat when it collides with the warm, wet storm system.

2. INFRARED PHOTOS FROM THE NOAA’S ENVIRONMENTAL VISUALIZATION LAB

Some of the most awe-inspiring photos of Sandy come from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Their satellites provide infrared data that illustrates the temperatures inside the storm cell--important, since the upward movement of warm, moist air is what gives the storm its momentum. Other satellite images from the NOAA show the beautiful with high-res detail.

3. THE NYC EVACUATION MAP

It may not bear the terrifyingly beauty of NASA’s infrared maps, but NYC’sinteractive map of evacuation zones is an important technical step for the city. The street grid comes from OpenStreetMap, the free, editable map of the world based on open source software. The zones and shelter data were overlaid using MapBox, a fast way to create and publish your own maps with an open API. The map builds on the success of the city’s Hurricane Irene map. NYC’s Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne explains that she wants to “encourage expert designers and developers to take advantage of the geographic files corresponding to hurricane evacuation zones, available free of charge on the NYC Open Data platform.” In the case of Hurricane Irene, dozens of major media outlets used to create their own maps, helping to reach an unprecedented number of New Yorkers. The map leaves out New Jersey (as per usual), but check out Google’s Crisis Map for a similar version of the entire shebang.

4. SANDY IN CONTEXT

How does Sandy rank compared to other hurricanes snow storm-cyclones? There are a couple ways to judge this, since this storm isn’t quite like anything else that’s happened in recent memory. This map of every hurricane starting in 1851 is pretty, but makes it tough to discern what’s unique about our Sandy. Same goes for this amazing map of every modern tropical cyclone. Instead, we pulled together a map comparing Sandy’s estimated path to that of a few other historic mid-Atlantic hurricanes, with Irene thrown in for reference.

5. REAL-TIME MAPS

We wrote about the animated Wind Map back in March, but today seems like a great time to revisit the beautiful project. The designers behind the map, Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg of Google’s Big Picture visualization research group, created it as a pet project that maps wind patterns across the U.S. in real time using data pulled from the National Weather Service’s Digital Forecast Database. Think of it as a chilled-out alternative for storm trackers who want to avoid the shrieking panic of network television. NASA’s EOSDIS has another real-time updating map, this one in true color. Of course, The New York Times' Graphics Desk ends up doing the best job at conveying the most information with the least clutter--check out their map here.

Just because Google abandoned its October Android event doesn't mean it's left its users out to dry -- Hurricane Sandy now has its very own Google Crisis Map. It isn't the first time Mountain View has lent its mapping tech to folks in harm's way -- survivors of Hurricane Issac used a similar Crisis Map to track the storm, follow public alerts and find shelters. Sandy's map is no different, providing locals with information on the storm's path, forecast information, evacuation routes, areas of high wind probability and even links to webcams surrounding affected areas. Google isn't the only firm lending a hand, either -- both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are lifting site paywalls during the storm, ensuring the public has access to developing news as long as their internet connection doesn't give out.