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GCN Home > 06/19/06 issue

DHS Special Report | FEMA maps out a better response

Geospatial and flood-mapping operations are helping to streamline emergency response

By David Essex, Special to GCN

While withstanding a storm of criticism for its response to recent large-scale natural disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has continued to make substantial investments in its geospatial and flood-mapping operations.

The strategy has provided both a ray of sunshine for the beleaguered agency and a public relations coup, as Web maps and data have proved to be almost ideal mechanisms to reach out to disaster victims en masse and respond to their requests. In the long term, geospatial technology should help FEMA become more effective in its core missions of disaster response and hazard mitigation, officials said.

Sophisticated analysis
Though some experts say the two terms have become almost synonymous, geospatial technology is generally regarded as going beyond the now-familiar marriage of electronic maps and data of geographic information systems by adding more sophisticated analysis. FEMA’s geospatial analysts work side by side with first responders, either in the field or remotely, helping them make critical decisions and direct resources where they are needed most.

“They’re supposed to provide sort of a backroom geospatial support function,” said John Wilson, a geography professor at the University of Southern California and president of the University Consortium of Geographic Information Science.

Wilson said geospatial teams are among the first to set up shop in a disaster area. “You have to ramp up from ... nothing to everything very quickly,” he said, citing the example of a local college that sent personnel, maps and data into New York City to replace geospatial support functions lost when the local emergency-management office was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001.

Understandably sensitive to fair and unfair criticism—and the resulting finger-pointing—after “heckuva job,” FEMA’s geospatial team seems quick to prescribe the limits of its responsibilities.

“FEMA is responsible for the flood maps,” said Frank Oporto, an IT specialist in the agency’s geospatial solution section. “Everything else we do is in consultation with multiple data sources.”

More news on related topics: Homeland Security, Management, IT Management



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