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Track: Emergency Management and Public Safety
Xiaoyi Zhang
Dewberry & Davis
8401 Arlington Blvd
Fairfax, VA 22031-4619
Telephone: 703-849-0674
Fax: 703-849-0118
E-mail: xzhang@dewberry.com
Hurricane Fran Disaster Response (GPS/GIS) Using Map Objects with Visual Basic Program
Defining Issue: Two days after Hurricane Fran landed along North Carolina shoreline in 1996, we were asked to conduct a GPS high-water mark survey and perform GIS data analysis. The purpose of this exercise was to support the FEMA regional office and engineer, who are not GIS professionals but who needed to use GIS tools to perform some GIS tasks. Typically these tasks involve tasks, such as overlaying different geographic data layers, viewing FEMA digital Q3 data, creating linkage to GPS survey points, linking the point to the digital photos, and printing multiple source reports. GIS Solution: In about a week period, we had produced a prototype of a generic GIS toolbox. It includes three major components: map, survey database and image, and printing functions. Objects are embedded in this map element using Esri MapObjects OCX. It includes the most common GIS functions such as zoom, pan, layer properties (color, class and value), identity, and feature selection. Users can also add new graphic
features (points, lines, polygons). Methodology: The survey database and image components are designed to create a survey database, data manipulation, and linkage to the digital photos. The toolbox also allows users to create links between the GIS data layer and survey database using SQL. The last part is a collection of different elements and produces formatted report print, which includes database, image and maps. The toolbox gives us a lot of flexibility and strength. It affects our production line process. For example, we were asked to produce a large volume of final reports in color. But we did not have enough resources, so we created a CD disk with the toolbox program and all of the database of a local printing shop. They used this toolbox to perform GIS tasks and produce them for us, which saved time and money. Another example is the same toolbox can be used for different tasks with minor changes of some default properties such printing, GPS certificate, viewing FEMA Q3 products, and so
forth.
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