Natural Hazards Participation Activity - Deepwater Horizon Spill

The Role of GIS in Disaster Response

The role of GIS in disaster response can be summarized in one word: information. When a disaster occurs, it is generally without warning and with potentially devastating impacts on people, infrastructure and natural resources. The need to be able to quickly determine where the danger lies and what impacts the disaster will have are critical to mitigating those impacts and, very probably, saving lives. Processing information quickly, efficiently and accurately is a necessity. Additionally, most disasters have a spatial element to them, whether it is buildings destroyed by an earthquake, forests burned down by a fire or roads blocked by debris from a hurricane. When conditions on the ground change, the need to find a way to represent those changes in a meaningful way is high. Maps are natural conduits of such information that are understandable to most people. By being able to combine large amounts of data into the summarized format of an easily understandable map, a GIS has the ability to excel over most other data acquisition and analysis systems and as such really shines in a disaster situation.

There are many examples of the role of GIS in disaster response from 911 to Hurricane Katrina. Currently, the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico is an all consuming disaster that is impacting the region immediately and will continue to impact not just the Gulf but the entire country, possibly the world, for years, maybe decades, to come. Almost from the beginning, GIS has been a component in the response as detailed in an article posted to the web-site, GIS and Science (http://gisandscience.com/2010/06/04/gis-response-to-deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-an-update-from-drew-stephens-at-the-gis-institute/). The article reports, “Beginning April 30, a team of ”GIS Smoke Jumpers” from across the USA deployed to Houma, LA to build and operate an enterprise-class GIS for the (sic) Houma Incident Command Post (ICP) in Louisiana.” The staff at first was assisting the Coast Guard with such things as over-flight/plume mapping and now have the Louisiana National Guard “posting data directly to a server from the field”. Presently, their database has over 150 layers of base map and operational data including a Google Earth application. GIS staff, the articles mentions, hosted members of the response Unified Command including representatives from the Departments of the Interior and Homeland Security, Louisiana’s Governor’s Office, the Army National Guard, the Air Force, US Fish and Wildlife and others. The article ends with the quote, “There are now many more senior-level administrators who understand the power of GIS!”

Whether it is mapping the spill plume, determining where oil is likely to come ashore, identifying areas of sensitive shoreline and wildlife, closing fisheries areas, determining impacts to businesses and local governments, directing response resources and managing responders or just providing information to a public that desires to better understand and relate the magnitude of the spill to their day-to-day lives, GIS can play a role. And the roles can change daily. For example, this morning, a C-Span interview with a Pensacola journalist, Carl Wernickle from the Pensacola News Journal, indicated that the government would like British Petroleum (BP) to turn over one to ten billion dollars to state, local and federal governments to manage, another area ripe for correlation with affected areas within a GIS. As longs as there are people, there will be disasters and a need for skilled GIS personnel to help manage the information needed to manage the disaster.

Animation Activity

The below link is to an avi animation of the Deepwater Oil Spill showing it's extent over several days from April 29th to May 20th with the projected trajectory as of May 26th. The file is an example of how a GIS can be used to create an "animated" map that can show how data changes over time, in this case the oil plume. I had some problems with the file. I could make the avi movie easy enough but when I tried to make adjustements I could not seem to get the file to work correctly. I wanted the movie to end on the May 26th projections and stay there but it kept defaulting back to the beginning. Unfortunately, the TS server has no method for reading avi file and so in order to view it I had to record the file which took about 3 minutes for me, then copy it to my pc which took another several minutes. The process became somewhat frustrating and I decided I'd just stick with what I had.

Deepwater Spill Animation