Abstract

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Paper
GIS for Emergency Response and Disaster Drills
Track: Homeland Security/Homeland Defense
Author(s): Devon Humphrey

Recently, there has been an increasing interest in the use of GIS for disaster preparedness and emergency response. While GIS has been maturing as a technology for many years, many emergency response organizations are still grappling with paper maps and fragmented information within their Emergency Operations Centers (EOCs). Making sense of all the various types and formats of information coming into the EOC during any disaster situation can be chaotic, but GIS can make it much easier to communicate what is happening to high-level decision makers, the general public, and the media.

The National Spill Control School uses ArcGIS within a virtual EOC environment to generate the scenario, to assist decision makers with damage assessment and response planning, and to document response activities during drills and training exercises. A case study of the use of GIS for disaster drills and training by the U.S. Navy will be presented.

Devon Humphrey
Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi
National Spill Control School
150 Sunset Ridge
Dripping Springs, TX 78620
US
Phone: 512-264-3246
E-mail: devon@waypointmapping.com