Threats to people and their property can take many forms. Many of the situations we concern ourselves with in this course are linked to natural events. But it is also important to consider a wide range of social and economic triggers that could cause emergency management situations. In this lesson, we'll take a look at a variety of disaster types and their associated geographic attributes.
At the successful completion of Lesson 2, students should be able to:
If you have questions now or at any point during this week, please feel free to post them in the Lesson 2 Questions and Comments Discussion in Canvas.
Lesson 2 is one week in length. Please refer to the Calendar in Canvas for specific time frames and due dates. To finish this lesson, you must complete the activities listed below. You may find it useful to print this page out first so that you can follow along with the directions.
This week, you will complete four primary activities:
Step | Activity | Access/Directions |
---|---|---|
1 | Work through Lesson 2. | You are in the Lesson 2 online content now. The Overview page is previous to this page, and you are on the Checklist page right now. |
2 | Complete the Lesson 2 Reading Assignment. | You can find this week's reading assignment on Page 4. |
3 | Read and respond to the Lesson 2 Emerging Theme. | Page 5 describes the Emerging Technology Theme assignment for this week. The graded portion of this assignment is to participate in the discussion in Canvas. |
4 | Write an abstract for your Term Project. | Page 6 outlines the requirements for your term project abstract. Submit your completed abstract to the dropbox I've created for it in Canvas. |
5 | Complete the Lesson 2 Writing Assignment (Article Critique). | Page 7 describes the writing assignment for Lesson 2. You will complete a 400 word critique of an article you read and submit this critique to the dropbox I've created for it in Canvas. |
There is a very wide range of hazards and disasters we must consider when planning GIS solutions for Emergency Management. It is easy to focus on the very large and obvious events - things like hurricances, earthquakes, and disease epidemics. For many GIS managers, however, there are day-to-day emergency situations on a local level that deserve plenty of attention: house fires, auto accidents, and violent crimes - just to name a few.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) keeps a running tab of declared disaster events [2] in the US. You've probably heard before on the news when the President declares one place or another as a "Federal Disaster Area" - and FEMA now publishes quite a few interesting summary maps of recent disasters at their GeoPlatform [3].
Take a look at this interactive summary of the 2014 Mississippi Tornado Outbreak [4].
A complimentary example can be found on a map mashup developed in Hungary to provide information on a wide range of hazards and disasters around the world. Take a look at this application called AlertMap [5].
The readings for this week are selected to continue the introduction to the application domain of GIS to Emergency Management. For some readings (here and in subsequent weeks), I’ll include questions to think about as you read, and responding to some of these questions will be part of your Class Participation grade.
For this and future reading assignments, when you see "Respond," you will need to answer at least one of the questions with a comment posted to the Canvas Discussion. You also must make at least one post in response to another classmate's comment, offering additional information or constructive criticism. Back and forth discussions are encouraged, so don't limit yourself to what is required!
What are the major challenges in GIS and emergency management for the three major areas of government: local, state, and federal? How do the issues at one level affect those at another? What are the barriers to a cohesive, integrated approach to emergency management across the levels?
NOTE: To complete this assignment, visit the Lesson 2 Reading Discussion Forum in Canvas [6].
This very short grant writing guide outlines some of the key sources for homeland security funding that you may wish to pursue to support GIS projects related to emergency management. This article is now almost ten years old - what do you notice has changed in the intervening years? DHS is still an important source of funding for projects, but things have certainly changed, right? The sources are still relevant, and the challenges they mention still ring true today. As you begin to think about your term project, you may wish to consider focusing on a grant proposal target (either a real one or something you can imagine coming up in the future).
UAVs are remote controlled airplanes and helicopters that are capable of providing surveillance and attack capabilities for military and civilian uses (no attack capabilities in the civilian case, unless you mount a potato gun). Their development grew out of the need for airborne reconnaissance on missions that are either too dangerous or too tedious for piloted aircraft. Today, UAVs have evolved to the point that some platforms are small enough to be easily deployed by a small support team, and require only a hand launch or a very short runway. They are often referred to more generically as Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), as the vehicles themselves are just one piece of the overall puzzle in most geospatial workflows.
One example of portable and affordable UAV technology is the senseFly eBee. This is a promo video with silly music, but the demonstration of what this little UAV can do is pretty phenomenal. Firing up your laptop on a skislope is kind of ridiculous though:
A burgeoning community has evolved around the development of so-called "homebrew" UAV systems. You should take some time to check out what's happening on the DIY Drones [9] community site where a large number of folks are sharing best practices, challenging each other to create better systems, and generally helping pave the way toward such systems becoming ubiquitous outside of traditional military / law enforcement settings. You may also be interested to have a look at the class we teach now [10] focused explicitly on UAVs and GIS working together.
UAVs are capable of surveying large areas very quickly to provide imagery to other types of remotely-sensed data. Satellite data is always valuable and desirable, but satellites cannot always be overhead at the right times on demand. UAVs can be deployed very quickly and can be easily directed toward different areas as the situational picture develops.
During the Sichuan Earthquake in 2008, Chinese researchers deployed small, lab-built UAVs to gather the first detailed pictures of the destruction. I've assembled slides from two presentations I saw on this topic at the 2008 China-US Workshop on Geo-Collaborative Crisis Management. Take a look at this PDF [11] depicting what Minhe Ji [12] from East China Normal University and Jianhua Gong [13] from the Institute of Remote Sensing Applications in the Chinese Academy of Sciences revealed about how they used UAVs in the aftermath of the earthquake. Then reflect on what you just saw demonstrated from the senseFly folks. Amazing how things have changed, right? What do you think will happen in the next five years?
Even more radical than the senseFly example above are the possibilities that can be had with really simple platforms like balloons. Have a look at Matthew Lippincott's [14] overview of what can be done with very little training and web-based image stitching software:
Finally, one more example from response efforts for floods in North Dakota in 2011 shows how the National Guard is using UAVs (toward the middle of the video) as part of an effort to develop a coordinated common operational picture:
NOTE: Respond to this assignment in the Lesson 2 Emerging Theme Discussion Forum in Canvas [6].
In Lesson 1, you were introduced to the term project assignment for this class.
This week, you need to choose one of the project options and decide what your term project will cover. To save you from looking back at Lesson 1, I've listed the project options here as well:
Here are four options you have for your term project. You can choose one of these options. If you'd like to riff on one of these and take it in a different direction, by all means, do so! These are really just suggestions - I want you to be innovative and surprise me with your good ideas for projects. I also know that many of you just want to know what would be a good example project focus, which is why I've listed these options here.
Provide a single, concise paragraph indicating which project option you choose, the topics you will cover, and the expected contributions of your work.
Your abstract should be no longer than 250 words. This assignment is worth 15 points, or 5% of your grade.
When you're finished with this assignment, submit your outline to the dropbox I've created for it in Canvas.
Save your files in the following format:
L2_tp_firstinitialLastName.doc (or .jpg or .pdf or .tiff).
For example, my file would be named "L2_tp_rmbeaty.doc" - This naming convention is important, as it will help me make sure I match each submission up with the right student.
Submit your assignment to the "Term Project: Abstract" dropbox in Canvas. See our Canvas Course Calendar for specific due dates.
For this assignment, I will assign grades with the following rubric. For each of the three main criteria, I will assign points on a scale from 1-5, with 5 being excellent and 1 being very poor. I define "Impact" as the strength and logic of the arguments and analytical insights you provide with your writing. I define "Content" as the level of understanding and knowledge of relevant topics you demonstrate with your writing. I define "Clarity" as the readability and organization of your writing (including formatting and appropriate graphic design where applicable).
For the Journal Paper (Cutter, 2003) you read this week:
Identify and discuss reasons why you think GIS technology currently requires technical experts to apply it in crisis management situations. What are the key issues that need to be addressed? Is that situation changing at all given recent developments in web mapping technologies? Suppose you had funding resources to combat this problem, where and why would you spend that money?
For this assignment, write no more than 400 words. This assignment is worth 15 points toward the writing assignment portion of your course grade.
Save your files in the following format:
L2_assign2_firstinitialLastName.doc (or .jpg or .pdf or .tiff).
For example, my file would be named "L2_assign2_rmbeaty.doc" - This naming convention is important, as it will help me match each submission up with the right student.
Submit your assignment to the Lesson 2 Writing Assignment in Canvas. See our Canvas Course Calendar for specific due dates.
For this assignment, I will assign grades with the following rubric. For each of the three main criteria, I will assign points on a scale from 1-5, with 5 being excellent and 1 being very poor. I define "Impact" as the strength and logic of the arguments and analytical insights you provide with your writing. I define "Content" as the level of understanding and knowledge of relevant topics you demonstrate with your writing. I define "Clarity" as the readability and organization of your writing (including formatting and appropriate graphic design where applicable).
This week, you have been introduced to the range of potential hazards that GIS systems for emergency management must be prepared to handle. In your reading assignment, we began to explore some of the key issues associated with supporting emergency management tasks with GIS tools. Knowing how to design an effective GIS system fo emergency management depends on understanding hazards as much as it depends on understanding the capabilities and limitations of current GIS technology.
Now that you have a general understanding of the types of hazards relevant to GIS systems for emergency management, we will begin examining the first of the four stages of emergency management in greater detail. In the next lesson, we will explore the role of GIS for Preparedness activities.
If there is anything in the lesson materials that you would like to comment on or add to, feel free to post your thoughts in the Lesson 2 Questions and Comments Discussion in Canvas. For example, what did you have the most trouble with in this lesson? Was there anything useful here that you'd like to try in your own work?
Links
[1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/interactives/japan-earthquake/index.html
[2] http://www.fema.gov/disasters
[3] http://fema.maps.arcgis.com/home/
[4] http://www.esri.com/services/disaster-response/severe-weather/MS-tornado-local-impact-map
[5] http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php
[6] http://psu.instructure.com
[7] http://grantwritingusa.com/hsarticle0304.pdf
[8] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog588/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.geog588/files/2003_GIScienceDisastersAndEM.pdf
[9] http://diydrones.ning.com/
[10] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog892/
[11] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog588/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.geog588/files/file/UAVs_Sichuan_Earthquake_Ji%26Gong.pdf
[12] http://faculty.ecnu.edu.cn/jiminghe/Info_cn.html
[13] http://blog.sciencenet.cn/home.php?mod=space&uid=113556&do=blog&id=51202
[14] http://www.headfullofair.com/