User Stories
National Preparedness Month: LANL uses Depiction
Sep 7th
National Preparedness Month is observed each September in the US. It’s a time when Americans take simple steps to prepare for the unknown. Depiction is partaking in this year’s event by featuring Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and how they use Depiction to prepare for such events as wild fire, potential security threats and scenarios on chemical leaks.
This webinar is free to attend! Alan Woodward, EOC Planning Sections Chief at LANL, will highlight several tabletop exercises, scenario simulations and take questions from attendees. This webinar is great for individuals, organizations and companies interested in preparedness planning and consequence assessment. Alan comments that LANL uses Depiction for its “ease of use, flat learning curve, professionalism and fast in-field collaboration capability”.
Attendees will learn how Depiction can be used to create simulations and facilitate ‘in the moment’ cooperation whether for a national laboratory, your neighborhood, fire department, police department, local government organizations or emergency field teams.
Alan Woodward joins us as our guest presenter September 22nd at 10:30am PST. He has worked in the Emergency Operations Division for 10 years as an analyst, emergency planner, and Section chief with over thirteen years experience developing geographic information systems (GIS) and GIS products. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Washington State University (in Physics) and a Master of Science degree from Oklahoma State University (in Plant and Soil Sciences). Currently, he is focused on developing GIS applications for emergency responders that can be used in an EOC or at the site of an emergency.
Also joining in to field questions and provide additional information are Rachel Hixson, Dave McClard and Bill Purtymun.
Rachel Hixson is a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialist with a Master of Arts degree in Geography from Arizona State University. She is helping to develop the GIS capabilities of LANL’s Emergency Operations Center. She has also been working on reverse plume modeling for a national bio-surveillance program at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for three years.
Dave McClard works in the EO-EM Group as an Emergency Manager. Current responsibilities: Focus on response management, Emergency Operations Center (EOC) operability, planning and preparedness activities, communication operations, aviation operations, and wildland fire operations. Dave began emergency management work in 1986 as a search and rescue (SAR) pilot and search and rescue trainer. His last five years were spent as the State Emergency Services Director and squadron commander for an auxiliary of the United States Air Force.
Bill Purtymun originally became involved in emergency management as a Firefighter III/ EMT Paramedic. He graduated from New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology with a BS in Geology. He has been employed at Los Alamos National Laboratory since 1989, initially as a Site Safety Officer for a non-reactor nuclear facility. In the mid 1990’s he became a LANL Emergency Manager and Incident Commander for the Emergency Operations Division. For the past several years he has worked in Hazard and Consequence Assessment at the LANL Emergency Operations Center. In his spare time he volunteers with the local ski and mountain bike patrol and is a Nationally Registered Paramedic. He is currently working on his masters in Emergency Management through Arizona State University.
Join us on September 22nd at 10:30am PST to learn more about how your organization can be better prepared, cross collaborate more efficiently and benefit from the Depiction software platform.
Flooding in Queensland, Australia, depicted
Jan 12th
Brisband Flooding and Supermarkets, by Silvia Estrada Flores, using ASTER-GDEM elevation data, OpenStreetMap imagery, Depiction, and information from many sources.
Silvia Estrada-Flores is a Depiction user and an expert in the food industry supply chain who lives in Australia. Naturally, she has been very concerned about the major flooding occurring in the state of Queensland–and, specifically, about the way the flooding is affecting grocery stores in the area.
Silvia used Depiction to first run rough simulations of the flooding and potential flooding in and around Brisbane, Queensland, using ASTER-GDEM elevation data (because she was unable to get access to the higher quality data generated by the government), and then to depict the situation facing the grocery stores in the area. She also used Depiction’s geoaligning capability to show the official flooding predictions in relation to grocery stores.
Silvia writes, “Today, I can just reassure consumers in Brisbane that there will be stores open around you. I am hoping that this map shows the areas where consumers can purchase supplies in these confusing times.” She will be writing more in the near future on the challenges of maintaining the supply chain in this situation, so pay attention to her blog, Chain of Events, if this information is important to you.
Even if you are not specifically concerned with the response of the food industry supply chain to disasters (though if you eat any food yourself, you may want to think on it at least a little!), I think Silva’s work illustrates a couple broader points. First, this is exactly the kind of thing Depiction was built for–giving powerful tools to subject-matter experts like Silvia, who may not have any experience with or access to GIS technology, but who have a need to depict the world around them in rapidly changing situations. Very few people have both the skills and resources to use high-end GIS and modelling software and the expert-level knowledge and experience in something like food industry supply chain management. And yet that field, and many others like it, have a real and abiding need for location-based knowledge, situational awareness, and the ability to ask “what if” about their community. We are very proud that Silvia was able to use Depiction to gain insights into the situation in Brisbane, and that Depiction users across the world are doing similar things within their own fields of expertise, without having to be mapping technology experts.
Second, the situation reminds us of the need for collaboration across boundaries. In her first blog post, Sylvia mentions her frustration with the unavailability of good quality elevation data:
It was difficult to find freely available information on elevation data. This can create difficulties for those planners dealing with emergency preparations that are not necessarily acting on behalf of the Government. I am aware of the National Elevation Data Framework portal, but I could not find elevation data for Queensland that is readily accessible. The process for downloading information (even in those cases where data happens to be free) is slow, due to the requirements of data licensing and so on. Not really useful when you are in a hurry to see flood damages and impact…
Here in the States, we are fortunate to have the USGS, which provides a relatively user-friendly method of obtaining good quality elevation data at multiple resolution levels through the Seamless Data Warehouse. This has allowed us to make US elevation data available as a Quickstart data set in Depiction. However, that is not the case in most parts of the world, and even here in the USA, many other crucial datasets are out of reach, depending on the locality. As Silvia notes, this presents major problems for people who are attempting to prepare for or respond to a disaster, among other things. Governments who are looking for an easy way to bolster the assistance that can be provided by the private sector during a disaster might think about making their GIS data easily accessible by the public.
“We Need It Bigger”
Dec 3rd
I had the good fortune this week to attend the first EOC (Emergency Operations Center) drill in Anacortes, WA. The GIS manager for the city, Rob Hoxie, has designated Depiction as their EOC mapping solution, and asked me to join him in the EOC.
The planning committee spent the last two months putting this drill together. As I understand it, most of the city staff has ICS training from FEMA, so this drill put that to the test. The Fire Chief acts as the EOC director, as the city does not have an emergency manager. The scenario for the 4-hour drill was a 30-inch snowfall over 3 days, which takes out the power and home phone service for the entire city (pop. 16,000). In preparation a member of the planning committee put together a Microsoft Access database to record events and track resources. Rob also put together 2 depictions of the city: 1 with all the events in it and one “blank”. I copied those files to my computer and used an email account to send events from the full depiction to the empty on via Live Reports, as Rob placed events “manually” as the scenario unfolded. Both processes worked well, and his became more effective when the internet and cell service went out in the scenario (the IT guys killed internet and I disconnected my wireless card). Rob also made use of the “Bring to center” button in the Manage content menu to make the newly placed events flash on the screen.
One of Rob’s hopes for the event was to bring attention to the depiction, which was projected on a 5′ screen from the ceiling. For the first hour or so, not many people took not, but by hour 3, folks in the front, middle and back of the room were consulting the depiction. Their main comment? “We need it bigger!” With 34 events on the map, many flashing and text shown to describe them, 5′ was not enough space. They’ll be looking into buying a 10′ screen.
A clipping of the events simulated in the drill
This was a very effective drill, and I was impressed by the dedication, attention and knowledge of the staff. I was also glad that one of the outcomes was a decision to move away from the 5-copy carbonless-paper form to report events to the room, hoping instead to provide each area of expertise with access to the ICS database to view and update events. Depiction could also help, and I will be working closely with Rob and his colleagues in coming months to help this happen.
Depiction in a Mobile Communications Unit
Apr 29th
A Depiction user runs a mobile command unit that is part of the Army MARS system. It’s outfitted with multiple radios, five computer stations, a printer, a fax and much more. In his latest update on his MCU website, he writes:
“Installed Depiction on all of the MCU’s desktop PCs to provide a Common Operating Picture of the disaster scene.”
This is exactly the kind of thing we love to see Depiction doing!
Depiction in Print
Apr 19th
One of our new users, Russell Deffner, also happens to be a writer with a GIS-related minor. He wrote the following article for The Flume, his local paper in Park County, Colorado. The paper recently published an article he wrote about a new state park being developed in the area. A PDF of the article is attached. Images Russell created with Depiction are excerpted below.
Thanks for sharing, Russell, and a fine use for Depiction!
The article: Staunton0001
ACCESSING STAUNTON STATE PARK
STAUNTON STATE PARK VERSUS METRO DENVER
