Geography plays an important role in planning for disasters and coordinating emergency response. A lot of informatin must be coordinated to get the right equipment to where it is needed.
Many government and private agencies rely on geographic information system (GIS) to access real-time information, make better decisions, and respond more effectively. Areas where geographic data make a difference include the following.
Emergency Response
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) are working together to use geographic information in the assessment of nationwide catastrophic risk, as well as in providing local, state, and regional officials with the necessary tools for planning and simulating efforts to mitigate losses from natural hazards and to prepare for emergency response and recovery from disasters.
Disaster Modeling
All types of disasters can be modeled in GIS, such as those caused by earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, wildfires, oil spills, chemical cloud releases, and others. When the appropriate geographic data are coupled with modeling applications, a disaster can be modeled before or during the event on computer generated maps. This gives disaster managers and response personnel the opportunity to train and prepare for disasters before they occur. Response personnel and disaster managers can also predict disaster movement as it occurs. For example, the spread of wildfires is often modeled as it occurs so fire personnel can plan their response.
Equipment Routing
Fire departments use geographic data to generate efficient routes between fire stations and reported incident locations, as well as to predict and potentially decrease the risk of lightning-caused damage.
Advanced vehicle location (AVL) and tracking is one of the newest technologies to hit the emergency response profession. Dispatch managers can track the location of various apparatus through global positioning system (GPS) transponders attached to the vehicles along a GIS generated basemap at the dispatch terminal.
Computer generated map data and integrated information access can significantly improve disaster planning, mitigation, and response capabilities.
If you would like to know more, we invite you to explore our many informational and downloadable resources.
