Kenneth Pelman September 21, 2010

Introduction and Problem Statement Evaluation Plans Tool Description Significance and Limitations Future Research

GIS

Current Evacuation Planning Solutions require substantial development/acquisition costs and extensive training

ESRI Network Analyst o Very detailed, but expensive o GIS Analyst Needed Custom Solutions o Hard-to-use interface o Customized for a specific case o Most don’t use real road network Web Based Solutions

Develop easy-to-use rapid evacuation planning tool that will make it possible for non-experts to quickly assess the impact of a potential evacuation This tool should rely primarily on a simple, interactive, visually-enabled interface The results the tool generates should provide actionable information that can be disseminated to decision-makers

Geospatial mashups have been used in the mitigation stage for disaster management and are viewed favorably by end users Google APIs can be used to develop a new evacuation planning tool o Publicly available o Takes advantage of Google’s cloud Iterative User-Centered Design/Evaluation can guide software development process

Establish user base of 5 people in emergency management community Determine normal workflow for an emergency manager declaring an evacuation Assess existing COTS solution (ESRI Network Analyst) in performing workflow o Time tasks take to perform o Ease of being able to perform tasks o Relevant statistics and information obtained from tasks

User feedback will be obtained after front-end interface is written as well as each piece of functionality Case study of final tool to be performed for Washington D.C. area Tool will be assessed by users o General questionairre asking users to assess their experience in working with the tool. o Ability to perform identified workflow in a timely manner

Ability to define area to be evacuated o KML overlay o User-drawn polygon Ability to define evacuation centers o By defining a “place” o By selecting a series of points Statistics on potential evacuation obtained for planning purposes

Each component will be tested and evaluated separately Subversion will be employed for documentation and version control Tool to be written in a combination of Javascript, PHP and AJAX Final functionality will be dependant on user input

Landscan population data SLOSH Model results FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Map Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHA) Buffer zone around a fault line

Evacuation tool performing complex spatial analysis with an easy-to-use interface o Relies on interactive, visual approach o Less need for a technical analyst / expensive software o Freely available Only designed for mitigation stage o Requires internet access o Performance issues not explicitly assessed

Goal: present this project at the 2011 Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) meeting Extend tool to support response phase Facilitate social media integration Adapt interface for use on on mobile devices