GIS: Why We Need Smarter Maps

Sep 9, 2003 12:00 PM, Michael Fickes

How geographic information systems can revolutionize our ability to respond to Homeland threats

In a recent Star Trek movie, Captain Jean Luc Picard of the U.S.S. Enterprise uses a map of a solar system to plan a response to a potential attack. If one of the planets in this solar system blew up, Picard asks, how would gravity alter the orbits of the remaining planets? The mapping system eliminates the planet in question and displays the new planetary orbits. The images in the revised map prove that the movie’s villain plans to destroy a planet.

The scene illustrates a 24th century application of geographic information systems or GIS, an emergency-planning tool available today to local, state, and federal emergency planners.

GIS is a computer-displayed mapping system showing layers of data. In an ideal GIS, an operator can display a map of, say, the entire city of Baltimore. Clicking on the Inner Harbor area of the map would bring up details of that part of the city. Suppose water and electrical utility managers wanted to connect power to a new building in that part of the city. The map could call up a view of water and power transmission lines flowing through the city block in question — as long as data about existing buildings, streets, and water and power lines was loaded into the system.

Much of the data necessary to support a GIS map already exists in digital or computer form. The problem is that the data is often housed in disparate locations. The water department has water line data; electrical utilities have electrical transmission data; and so on.

Today, emergency planners are searching for ways to consolidate data related to the nation’s infrastructure and make it available through GIS employed by local, state, and federal Homeland security personnel.

Conventional GIS Applications

GIS has been used for years to manage business issues for local governments. For example, sanitation-planners use desktop computers equipped with GIS to route trash collection trucks through new residential developments in growing communities.

To set new routes for trash trucks, a computer running GIS software imports data describing the new development. The data includes the names and locations of new streets, including speed limits, traffic signals and one-way information. Addresses of new houses and business buildings also flow into the systems. Each of these new data-bits includes a geo-code or a latitude and longitude, with which GIS places streets and houses in their proper locations on a map. Sanitation GIS already contains data on available trucks, existing collection routes and directions to the nearest landfills. An operator need only click a mouse to ask the system to route trucks through the new development.

GIS will also answer questions: Will the additional routes require overtime for one truck or another? If so, would new trucks balance the routes so that all drivers would have eight-hour days? How many new trucks would it take? Which alternative is cheaper: no overtime or some overtime?

Emergency planners also use GIS. Fire departments, for example, use GIS maps to set response times from various stations.

In Southern California, an emergency planner might want to ask GIS to map every slope of a certain gradient and orientation to the sun containing a certain kind of vegetation. Such a map would suggest areas at risk for wildfires. More questions might reveal the communities that a wildfire would threaten and enable planners to develop prevention efforts.

Do planners have access to this kind of data? “Most of these data sets are available,” says Russ Johnson, manager of the public safety group for Homeland security with ESRI, a GIS product and service provider based in Redlands, Calif. “The Forestry Service has mapped vegetation. Data on slopes is available through the U.S. Geographical Survey. Housing developments are included in local government data.” A GIS can manipulate the data to answer questions about wildfires. Johnson calls GIS a central window that planners can use to visualize infrastructure and develop response scenarios.

While all of this is possible, access to data remains a limiting factor. That limitation was apparent during and after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Lessons Of Sept. 11

Johnson spent 10 days at Ground Zero after the attacks on the World Trade Center. Working with a mapping team of 25 people, Johnson helped produce 10,000 GIS maps answering a stunning array of basic questions for response and rescue teams.

At Ground Zero, emergency responders encountered massive and disorienting piles of debris, Johnson recalls. Somewhere within the debris, there were gas pipes, fuel tanks, chemical tanks, electrical connections, and other pieces of infrastructure that needed attention. The GIS team searched city and private records for infrastructure data, imported the data into GIS and produced maps to assist the emergency workers.

“For example, we made maps to help allocate fire trucks,” Johnson says. “When the buildings collapsed many trucks were destroyed. We had to figure out where to put the remaining trucks to cover the city. We also had to decide how to manage fire units that arrived to help. Where did it make sense to put units not familiar with the city?”

When the World Trade Center was constructed, a water wall was installed below the building to guard against any rise in the neighboring Hudson River. Where was the water wall? How far below the piles of debris? What was its condition? GIS maps created from construction plans helped first responders find the wall and deal with related problems.

By mapping routes out of the city, the GIS team helped the police manage traffic. In addition, weather modeling software was imported into GIS computers to map the movements of the giant plume sent up by the collapsing buildings. Used in conjunction with GIS mapping systems, the weather modeling software identified endangered areas, secondary areas that were not as bad and areas less affected. First responders seen wearing masks on television were following warnings issued on the basis of GIS mapping analyses.

While emergency responders worked fast, they could have worked faster if the maps had arrived sooner. The problem was that none of the data was available in a central repository. It was located on individual desktops across the city. The GIS team had to go to where the data was, collect it — often on disk — and import it into the GIS laptops and desktops. “The single most important lesson learned in New York City was that all of this data has to be brought together,” Johnson says.

From The Ground Up

Since Sept. 11, local governments across the country have focused with new intensity on collecting data that can be used in emergency GIS applications. Companies with GIS capabilities are helping. In Charlotte, N.C., for example, Woolpert LLP, an architecture and engineering firm, has contracted to provide GIS data to the city’s ambulance service, which is required to respond to calls within four minutes. Woolpert is developing a mapping system with a level of detail necessary to achieve that four-minute response time. “First and foremost, they need accurate road data,” says James Kiles, Woolpert’s GIS project manager.

Beyond ensuring accuracy, Woolpert also looks at potential transportation blockages such as construction zones, underpass height restrictions and weight restrictions for bridges. These types of data build intelligence into GIS.

While Woolpert works on the ambulance data, another company may be mapping water utility lines, adding new lines to newly constructed communities. Once again, accuracy is key. When a pipe bursts, water utility managers need to know where to send the trucks and where the right shut-off valves are located.

The next step in GIS data management rises to the level of Homeland security. A local emergency response center, for example, needs ambulance routing data and water utility data, as well as data about the electrical and gas infrastructures in a city. During an emergency situation, state and federal authorities will want access to this data as well. “Communicating data among local, state and federal departments requires a higher level of effort,” Kiles says. “A key discussion right now involves setting standards between levels of government to facilitate communications.”

GIS For Homeland Security

How can agencies within the Department of Homeland Security tap into the local data collected by cities, utilities and even architectural firms that have designed city buildings and residences?

In December 2002, an organization called the Open GIS Consortium (OGC) won a contract to answer this question. OGC includes more than 230 companies, government agencies and universities working to develop technologies that will “geo-enable” the Internet.

Called Geospatial One-Stop or GOS, the project is being managed by the Department of the Interior. GOS is the first attempt to create a nationwide data communications system that will tie GIS and other data together, says Matthew Tate, director of the U.S. Federal Business Unit, with the Huntsville, Ala.-based Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions Group, a member of the consortium.

In concept, GOS will create a portal or window through which individuals and organizations can look at, organize and use data describing the nation’s infrastructure. America Online is a portal. AOL subscribers can log onto that system and find their way to enormous amounts of data and services. They can check the weather in their local areas. They can read newspapers and magazines. They can use services available on AOL to track and manage their stock portfolios. They can search for restaurants in particular communities and call up maps that provide directions.

The GOS portal will aim to provide a wide range of GIS-based data and services on the same kind of model. A mission planner from Homeland security, might, for example, use GOS to download photographs of nuclear power plants from power plant Web sites. The planner might then send the digitized photographs to the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) at the Department of Defense. NIMA provides a service called orthorectification, which links points on a photograph to geography and enables that data to be integrated into a GIS map.

“In an emergency, a first responder could ask GOS to identify routes that will enable police to route traffic away from an affected area,” Tate says.

Had a GOS-style system been available on Sept. 11, emergency responders would have had instant electronic access to the data and the information the GIS mapping team had to assemble by hand. Of course, imagining GOS doesn’t make it real. “It’s one thing for federal and state governments to want access to a city’s data for emergency planning, it’s another thing to pay for it,” says Mark Doherty, director of government solutions, North America, for Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions.

Cities have already collected much of the data, but there are issues related to ensuring that cataloged data is up to date. The data must also be connected to the Internet in an accessible format. GOS is developing the digital formats, but local agencies in jurisdictions across the country will have to do the work and purchase the technology to bring their systems on line. For a large city with 10 to 15 departments, Doherty estimates the cost in the hundreds of thousands. “And local governments are as strapped for cash as anyone today,” he says.

Paying for GOS or a system like GOS will take years. Doherty prefers not to hazard a guess as to how many.

Nevertheless, GOS represents the first concrete plan under which all levels of government will be able to access local data capable of helping emergency responders do their work faster and more efficiently when events require it.

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