GSN March 2016 Digital Edition

Marrying mobility and location data for
effective disaster response
By Scott Lee
TerraGo Technologies
There was a time when disaster
response was planned
in a room among experts
and authorities that would
focus on improving coordination
with one another
when the next hurricane or earthquake
struck.
Understandably, their plans
relied upon the traditional networks,
telecommunications
and computer systems. But
Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy,
disasters in Haiti and Japan,
wildfires in the Northwest,
winter floods along the Mississippi
and terrorist attacks
in Paris and San Bernardino
have given us numerous examples
of how mobile technology
can improve our
ability to respond and recover
from these types of
events.
Those events also have raised
government and public awareness
of mobile devices as crowdsourcing
tools that have spawned masses
of eyewitnesses eager to share
their observations. In this case,
the smartphone in the
hands of the public provided
faster and better
situational awareness
than traditional systems.
The mobile revolution,
which accelerated
in 2008 when geospatial
chips turned cell phones
into smart phones, has produced
a worldwide cadre of trained data
collectors ready to help at the speed
of thumbs on
phone screens.
But in all too many cases, state and
local relief agencies are unable to
take full advantage of this resource,
or unwilling to rely on public net-
10
works.
The Department of Homeland Security
ranks inability to act without
network connectivity as the chief
issue hindering disaster response,
just ahead of the lack of capability
– or unwillingness – to share data
horizontally and vertically over local
and state stove-piped legacy
systems. The priority remains, even
though the geospatial industry began
working offline in 2005, three
years before the mobile phone added
geospatial capability. Today’s
mobile users cache maps
and forms that enable
them continue collecting
location-based data without
network access, and to
sync seamlessly into a common
operating picture when
connectivity is restored.
Mobile users are constantly
producing geo-tagged location
reports, with supporting
images and video to enhance
the operating picture. These
observations contain real-time
geographic reference points
that allow responders to mobile
resources faster, saving time and
lives.
Enlightened officials are includ-