Published on GEOG 588: Planning GIS for Emergency Management D7 Upgrade (https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog588)

Home > GEOG 588 > Lesson 6: Recovery

Lesson 6: Recovery

Lesson 6 Overview

Snapshot of an interactive map [1] made by USAToday to reveal the long-term efforts necessary for New Jersey to recover from Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

This week, we will focus on what GIS can support in the final phase of emergency management - recovery. After response efforts have ended, recovery efforts can begin in earnest. GIS can be used to plan near-term infrastructure repairs and to identify candidate organizations and communities to receive long-term aid and assistance through grants and infrastructure projects. Recovery projects frequently involve close interaction with disaster victims who want to rebuild and return to 'life as usual." This poses challenges and opportunities for GIS practicioners and those who consume information from GIS analyses. We will discuss these topics and others throughout this lesson.

Objectives

At the successful completion of Lesson 6, students should be able to:

  • explain and compare multiple ways in which GIS can be applied to disaster recovery efforts;
  • identify strengths and weaknesses in current GIS-based approaches to disaster recovery;
  • complete the first full draft of your term project;
  • describe and discuss non-expert systems and how they may impact future GIS systems for emergency management.

Questions?

If you have questions now or at any point during this week, please feel free to post them to the Lesson 6 Questions and Comments Discussion in Canvas.

Checklist

Lesson 6 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.

Steps for Completing Lesson 6

Step Activity Access/Directions
1 Work through Lesson 6. You are in the Lesson 6 online content now. The Overview page is previous to this page, and you are on the Checklist page right now.
2 Complete the Lesson 6 Reading Assignment. You will find the Lesson 6 Reading Assignment on Page 4.
3 Read and Respond to the Lesson 6 Emerging Theme topic. The Emerging Theme topic for Lesson 6 is located on Page 5. Read the material there and participate in discussion as directed.
4 Complete the First Draft of your Term Project. Page 6 outlines what you need to do to complete your first full draft of your final project. When you are ready, submit your draft final project to the dropbox I've created for it in Canvas.

 

Recovering from Disasters

Seventeen days after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, much of the city is still under water. In this pair of images from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer on NASA's Terra satellite, the affected areas can clearly be seen. The top image was acquired in 2000, and the bottom image was acquired September 13, 2005.

This pair of images [2] showing the impact of Hurriance Katrina was gathered with NASA's Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER [3]).

The flooded parts of the city appear dark blue, such as the golf course in the northeast corner, where there is standing water. Areas that have dried out appear light blue gray, such as the city park in the left middle. On the left side of the image, the failed 17th Street canal marks a sharp boundary between flooded city to the east, and dry land to the west. The images cover an area of 10.4 x 7.1 kilometers and are centered near 30 degrees north, 90.1 degrees west.

The boundary between response and recovery is a fuzzy one as is that between recovery and mitigation. It is useful to think of the stages of emergency/crisis management as a circle with each stage blending into the next. The roles of GIS can be conceptualized as occupying (often overlapping) positions along this circle.

This overlap in functions was never more apparent than with the 2005 Katrina Hurricane disaster to hit New Orleans. In the midst of efforts to rescue people stranded by flood waters, politicians and others began discussing how or whether to rebuild the city--opening what will probably be a long dialogue about the potential to rebuild in a way that is more resistant to future similar events and comparing the economic and other costs of this option with suggestions to not rebuild at all or to relocate the entire city. Similarly, while levee repairs and rescue efforts continued, work began in some parts of the city to start on recovery--with spatial tasks ranging from figuring out where displaced individuals were, through assessing damage in regions of the city to determine whose insurance claims of disaster relief requests to process first, to re-establishing utilities, fixing roads, and other efforts to establish infrastructure required to carry out whatever recovery efforts were decided upon.

Organizations like the Ocean Conservancy [4] can advocate for their preferred long term recovery strategies by leveraging geospatial technologies and analysis methods. This map shows the areas of need that they saw emerging from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill [5].

As you read the course materials and other resources this week, think about strategies that are needed to develop GIS as general capability through which governments and other organizations can address the full range of emergency management challenges. Consider, in particular, what strategies are needed to make the process of using GIS to support each stage of emergency management seamless--so that it is practical for emergency management teams to move quickly from the planning to the recovery stage as an event happens and to move among response, recovery, and planning-mitigation tasks as needed.

Also consider one common constraint - quite often the provisioning given to GIS systems to support emergency management is focused on preparedness and response phases. It's a lot harder to convince people to invest in new systems to support long-term recovery efforts.

Reading Assignment

The readings for this week focus on the final component of emergency management, recovery. You will read a short chapter in your text and two papers that address different approaches for using spatial analysis to understand patterns of recovery after major disasters.

  1. Read: Chapter 7 (pp. 213-230) from Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for Disaster Management
    This chapter deals with the challenge of using GIS to help communities and organizations cope with events having geographically distributed impacts. Such events can range from relatively localized chemical spills affecting a small drainage basin, through major events impacting hundreds of thousands of people and with substantial financial impacts (such as 9/11, the 2011 Japan Earthquake, or Hurricane Sandy).

    THINK ABOUT

    As you read, consider the following: How is use of GIS for recovery likely to differ for different kinds of events? What recovery-related GIS issues does your text not cover that ended up being important in the years subsequent to a disaster like Hurricane Katrina?

  2. Read: Stevenson, J.R, Emrich, C.T., Mitchell, J., and Cutter, S.L. 2010. Using Building Permits to Monitor Disaster Recovery: A Spatio-Temporal Case Study of Coastal Mississippi Following Hurricane Katrina [6]. Cartography and Geographic Information Science 37(1): 57-68.

    RESPOND

    The two journal articles (this one and the one below) I'm having you read this week focus on very different ways of using GIS to explore longer term recovery from different types of disasters. What advantages or disadvantages do you see in both approaches?

  3. Read: Wagner, M.A., Myint, S.W., and Cerveny, R.S. 2012. Geospatial Assessment of Recovery Rates Following a Tornado Disaster [7]. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. 50(11): 4313-4322.

    THINK ABOUT

    This article presents an approach to spatial analysis of recovery efforts that focuses on the use of Remote Sensing technology and analytical methods. How could this approach be augmented by other data sources or methods to enhance its explanatory capability and utility?

 

Emerging Theme: Non-Expert Systems

Non-Expert Systems

A persistent issue with the application of GIS to emergency management is that there is often a significant knowledge gap between the GIS experts who know and understand the tools and intricacies of geographic data and the decision makers who have to act on information derived from GIS systems. Training decision makers on the use of GIS is not practical in most circumstances (and during a crisis situation, it's already too late).

This problem is not unique to GIS systems for emergency management. Businesses and organizations in many other domains experience the same situation. It is common enough now that an entirely new area of software development has emerged to meet this challenge, focused on the design and creation of so-called executive information systems [8] that take the output of high-level analysis tools and translate that information into consumable and actionable intelligence geared toward the problems and level of technical understanding that decision makers have.

Dashboards

Recent years have seen a huge rise in executive information systems known as Dashboards. The idea behind dashboards is quite simple - what decision makers need most of the time is a strategically-oriented overview of their data. When we drive in a car, we have several basic information displays available that provide real-time feedback to help us control and guide the vehicle. As a result, many software dashboards resemble real world dashboards and industrial gauge panels to play off this common design metaphor (even though this is often a terrible idea [9]).

Tableau Software offers tools to help analysts quickly assemble dashboards that are viewable and interactive through standard web browsers. Tableau focus on standard tabular datasets, but also include some basic mapping capabilities, and having used previous versions of their software myself, I recommend you check out what they offer if you think dashboards are in your organization's future (note - I have no stake in Tableau - they paid me zero dollars to say that). Here is a nice video overview of Tableau's tools that shows how data analysis tools connect to web-based dashboards [10].

Screenshot from a Tableau [11] Dashboard showing a mix of business indicators in an easy to understand display.

Unfortunately, many dashboards (those from Tableau notwithstanding) are designed with flashy graphics that grossly violate best practices for the graphic display of data. It is enough of a problem now, that folks like Stephen Few [12] are publishing books and working very nicely-paid consulting gigs to revamp bad dashboards to make sure their visual elements effectively communicate underlying data (take his Graph IQ test [13] - it's good for anyone who works with maps and graphics to know this stuff).

GIS & Dashboards

Not surprisingly, GIS-driven dashboards are becoming more and more common. In many respects, recent work by Esri to promote and enhance ArcGIS Online and their StoryMaps templates could be considered examples of geospatial dashboard. I consider this a positive sign for the future of GIS in all types of organizations - for too long, what we do in GIS has been difficult to communicate to the outside world, and that has begun to change with things like widely-accessible web mapping tools and decision support dashboards. If we are able to design systems that reduce the time and steps required to communicate what is known from GIS analysis to decision makers then it becomes possible to more efficiently address the emergency situation. The fact that you can tweet out a live link to your semi-interactive map from ArcGIS Online is a really positive step.

Some design criteria for GIS-enabled dashboards could include:

  • The system must allow non-programmer analysts to quickly customize the dashboard (for example, when conditions change, data sources are modified, etc...).
  • Dashboard tools and graphics must be readily understandable by decision makers who have no GIS training.
  • Dashboards tools and graphics should focus on strategic objectives and the "big picture."
  • Time is an essential element - it has to be possible to understand changes over time in a disaster scenario.
Screenshot of SpatialKey
SpatialKey [14] offers very clever map-enabled dashboards designed for non-experts to explore and analyze spatial data. This example shows forecasted impacts from Hurricane Sandy for use by an insurance compan.

Finally, I'd like you to take a look at a fascinating (crazy?) video that was developed by some folks in the visual analytics community (Information Visualization and Visual Analytics group at PNNL [15]) who are charged with the task of envisioning new non-expert systems that help people collaborate in complex decision making scenarios. The concept is called Precision Information Environments [16]:

For even more information on whether or not this stuff is really even possible, check out Precision Information's annotated browser version [17], which highlights how current emerging technologies directly inspired the things that are featured in this video.

Deliverables for this week's emerging theme

  • Post a comment on the Lesson 6 Emerging Theme Discussion in Canvas on how you could envision non-expert systems featured as part of a GIS system for emergency management. What are the challenges and opportunities here? Are there some aspects of emergency management that could never be made simple enough to appear in a dashboard? Are there other aspects that obviously "should" be visible in simple dashboards?
  • Then, I'd like you to offer additional insight, critique, a counter-example, or something else constructive in response to one of your colleagues' posts.
  • Brownie points for linking to other technology demos, pictures, blog posts, etc... that you've found to enrich your posts so that we may all benefit.

 

Term Project - Finish Your First Draft

Term Project - First Draft

This week, you need to finish the first draft of your term project. Your goal should be to make the first draft as high-quality as possible, with the idea that doing so will mean you have less work ahead of you to complete your second (and final) draft.

I have designed the timing of this assignment so that I have time to read your full drafts, offer feedback and editing suggestions, and return them to you with enough time left in the course so that you can revise your work before submitting a final version.

Here are my expectations for your first draft:

  • Your draft should be complete (what you wrote about in your abstract and outline is covered).
  • It should be well-written using correct grammar & spelling.
  • Your draft should not exceed the 2500 word limit (citations & figure captions do not count toward the word limit).
  • The format of your document should be consistent and elegant.
  • You should use a common citation format and apply it consistently. If you don't know which one to use, Chicago Author-Date [18] style is a good default.

Term Project - First Draft Submission Instructions

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:

L6_tp_firstinitialLastName.doc (or .jpg or .pdf or .tiff).

For example, my file would be named "L6_tp_arobinson.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 Lesson 6 Term Project First Draft dropbox in Canvas. See our Canvas Course Calendar for specific due dates.

Term Project - First Draft Grading Criteria

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).

Impact, Content, Clarity: 5 = Excel., 4 = VG, 3 = Satis., 2 = Poor, 1 = V. Poor

Summary

This week, we moved to the final phase of emergency management - recovery. Recovery from a disaster can take a very long time (many would argue that we are still working on the aftermath of Katrina, for example), and there are a wide range of roles that GIS can play in the recovery process. For example, GIS may be called upon to identify areas for redevelopment projects or to recalibrate vulnerability models to help predict future disaster impacts.

Talk of recovery plans may begin quite early following a disaster. We learned that during Katrina there were efforts to begin talking about the rebuilding process during the response phase of the disaster. A key challenge that GIS systems for emergency management must face will be rapidly changing priorities.

Now that we have identified and discussed all four stages of the emergency management process, we will shift focus in the next lesson toward the use of scenarios to plan GIS systems for emergency management. You've had a bit of experience with these already in your University vulnerability assessment work in Lesson 3. Scenarios can be incredibly useful tools to help predict what technology and capabilities a GIS system will need to have to handle all phases of emergency management.

 

Tell us about it!

If there is anything in the lesson materials that you would like to comment on or add to, feel free to post your thoughts to the Lesson 6 Questions and Comments Discussion.  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?

 


Source URL: https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog588/l6.html

Links
[1] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/graphics/2013/sandy-recovery-map/index.html#8/40.149/-74.394
[2] http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery-detail.asp?name=neworleans
[3] http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/
[4] http://www.oceanconservancy.org/
[5] http://www.oceanconservancy.org/places/gulf-of-mexico/2013-impacts-map_final.jpg
[6] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog588/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.geog588/files/file/Stevenson_et_al.pdf
[7] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog588/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.geog588/files/file/Wagner_et_al.pdf
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_information_system
[9] http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/misc/WhyMostDashboardsFail.pdf
[10] http://www.tableau.com/products/desktop
[11] http://www.tableausoftware.com
[12] http://www.perceptualedge.com/
[13] http://www.perceptualedge.com/files/GraphDesignIQ.html
[14] http://www.spatialkey.com/
[15] http://vis.pnnl.gov/
[16] http://precisioninformation.org/
[17] http://precisioninformation.org/conceptvideo/1024x768/PIE_player_1024x768.html
[18] http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html