Tracking roadway obstacles
Howard County, Md., has created a Web-based GIS application that allows employees in the Department of Public Works to map road closures without the help of a technician. The application, which resides on the county’s intranet, was built to improve communication between county departments during emergencies, but it also will be used to support daily operations for the entire county.
When Hurricane Isabel hit the Eastern United States last fall, the Howard County GIS Division was called to work in the county’s emergency operations center (EOC) to create maps that supported disaster response activities. The division had developed a sophisticated online GIS application for employees to use during emergencies, but it found that the complicated application could not quickly produce the maps that response agencies needed during a crisis. “This was the first time that we had someone from GIS posted in the EOC during an incident,” says Virginia Peterman, GIS coordinator. “Until you’re actually in the situation, a lot of your perceptions can be wrong. You realize you can’t [push 10 buttons] to do a task.”
During the hurricane, the county found that fallen trees caused the most problems, closing many roads. GIS staff modified the existing online application during the emergency to track when and where roads were obstructed and when they were cleared. However, one of the four-person GIS staff had to be in the EOC at all times to create those maps. “Somebody had to relay the information to us, and we’d put it in the system,” Peterman says. “We could display maps and show ‘these are the roads that are closed, these are the roads that are back open,’ but it was very labor intensive. We don’t have [a] sufficient [number of] technically trained GIS staff to be running very sophisticated applications in the middle of an emergency.”
Following the three-day stint in the EOC, the GIS staff decided to create a customized online application to better serve the emergency workers’ needs. “We found that [we needed] very specific programs for very specific tasks,” Peterman says.
The GIS Division and the Department of Public Works worked together using MapXtreme software from Troy, N.Y.-based MapInfo and a Microsoft Access database to build an interactive application for employees who are not technically trained on GIS to update maps. Public works employees complete Web-based forms to report fallen trees or power lines, floods or other situations that block traffic. Once they submit the form, an icon appears in the GIS application to show what the incident is and where it has occurred. When a road is cleared, the employee can click on the icon to access a form to change the status of the incident. When that form is submitted, the icon changes to indicate the road has been reopened. Viewers can search for closures by address, by common building names or by selecting areas of the map. “It’s like going to one of the commercial map Web sites where you get your driving directions,” Peterman says. “It’s very intuitive that way.”
Currently, the county is testing the site and plans to launch it this month so all employees can view the application on the county’s intranet. The Department of Public Works plans to update the site regularly with local road conditions. In the event of another emergency, public works staff will be able to update the maps so public information staff and county officials can stay informed about the status of local roads.
The road closure application complements Howard County’s comprehensive online GIS that gives county employees access to an extensive amount of land-based information through more than 100 data layers, including aerial photography and property ownership information. The GIS Division plans to develop similar applications for other departments using the same technology. “We can take this application and modify [and] customize it to track different kinds of things,” Peterman says. “We learned it is much better to have very simple to use, very directed applications than a single application that tries to be all things to all people.”
