Emergency management is a continuous process that involves activities before, during, and after a disaster. Because a utility’s emergency processes rely heavily on location, geographic information system (GIS) technology is critical to providing timely, accurate, and complete information from many sources. essential for effective decision-making.
Why Location Matters
Customers, crews, assets, and buildings are scattered throughout the service territory. Events like wildfires, earthquakes, floods, blizzards, and cyber and physical attacks can strike anywhere. Knowing where wildfires are most likely to occur or where low-lying areas may flood are examples of how location matters. For example, the best location to stage crews and equipment before an approaching hurricane must be fully understood.
Also, understanding where assets and people are most vulnerable is crucial. Questions like where to harden the network, where vulnerable populations are at risk, or where to prioritize recovery must be answered. Utilities must always know what’s happening and where.
GIS provides the required location intelligence. Situations change quickly, and GIS analysis can help workers adjust at a moment’s notice. The ability to transform data into useful information is essential for coordination, navigation, data collection, and asset monitoring, which is important in normal times and can be lifesaving during emergencies. Location is at the heart of emergency management. Because utility processes revolve around where events occur, spatial analysis helps utilities become agile when it matters most.
Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) is a prime example of innovation in using GIS for emergency management. PLN is Indonesia’s state-owned enterprise that is responsible for most of the electricity supply across the archipelago. PLN oversees nearly 70,000 lines of transmission and over one million km of distribution, serving more than 100 million customers. The earthquake and ground liquefaction natural disasters in Palu in 2018 greatly impacted infrastructure, including the destruction of electrical assets. It became clear to PLN that restoring power to its impacted customers took too long. Indonesia is in what some call the “Ring of Fire,” where volcanic and seismic activity is common. PLN used Esri’s GIS products, including ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, and ArcGIS Dashboards, to digitize data and conduct spatial analysis and smart mapping. Digitizing the electrical assets in GIS allowed PLN to spatially locate their equipment near where natural disasters are most likely to occur. PLN used GIS in combination with readily available disaster data from government sources. Dashboards provided management with a complete view of the analysis and a means of monitoring the network hardening process.
GIS Organizes the Processes of Emergency Management
Major emergency tasks include decentralizing staff, securing foreign aid crews, housing and feeding them, handling material, clearing trees, and dispatching. These tasks all deal with location.
“GIS gave PLN the means to create Aha moments by integrating government disaster data with network asset information. It became a game changer.” -Very Fernando, PLN manager.
Utilities depend on information technology (IT), such as customer information systems, and operational technology (OT), such as outage management systems, which are all typically dedicated stand-alone. GIS provides the framework to organize disparate systems together by location by breaking down silos.
GIS provides advanced analytics using technologies like machine learning and augmented reality.
Too often, workers fall back on legacy habits like using paper, map books, manila folders, pens, pencils, yellow pads, and spreadsheets. Scenes like paper maps on the floor, piles of printouts of spreadsheets, and people jammed into conference rooms are all too common.
GIS drives innovation by eliminating these old, wasteful habits.
Once the event has passed, the utility must begin the rebuilding process. Customers are without essential services. There may be obstacles such as downed wires, burning fires, trees obstructing traffic flow, or exposed gas pipes. The task ahead can be daunting. The key to optimizing the recovery effort is rapid assimilation of data and close coordination with utility workers, first responders, and community officials. GIS helps organize the work by location, monitoring progress and sharing recovery results widely. Utilities must keep track of temporary quick fixes and accurately report material usage for future asset management and record keeping. Finally, they must document the lessons they have learned to help refine future recovery plans, noting patterns, obstacles, and missed opportunities.
As an example, CORE Electric Cooperative innovates with GIS to manage wildfires. It serves about 170,000 members across 5,000 square miles along Colorado’s front range. CORE needed to address the trend of increasing potential damage from wildfires. The utility used ArcGIS to approach wildfires in four ways: risk analysis, mitigation, situational awareness, and response. As a result, CORE leveraged detailed location-based information, analytical functions, and swift communication to safeguard its stakeholders against wildfire danger.
Avista Utilities provides another example of planning for the dangers of wildfires. It provides energy services to 411,000 electric and 377,000 natural gas customers across 30,000 square miles and four northwestern states. Wildfires are common throughout northeast Washington and northern Idaho, and as the population expands, many residents live in suburban areas next to forested lands. Avista’s solution consisted of creating a Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) model based on ArcGIS Pro and its model builder technology and a weather-influenced model based on ArcGIS Experience Builder and ArcGIS Dashboards. The WUI algorithm created a series of risk hexagons overlaid on Avista’s electric facilities to quantify fire risk based on human development, burnable fuels, power outage rates, and vegetation near powerlines. In addition, the dynamic risk model helps Avista manage the system in real-time by aligning system protection levels with fire ignition risk on each circuit in the service territory.
“The time to prepare for a wildfire is well before the first spark ignites. That’s where GIS and spatial analysis provide the most authoritative fire risk.” Russ Johnson, retired Director of Public Safety at Esri, former Fire Chief for the U.S. Forest Service, and now a consultant and partner of Bent Ear Solutions.
GIS pinpoints the location of weaknesses, outages, damages, crews, and materials. It supports emergency management decisions in three ways, allowing utilities to:
- Build resilience.
- Respond with real-time information.
- Recover by rebuilding, coordinating, and sharing.
These processes result in data-driven insights, enabling utilities to prepare strategically, respond rapidly, and recover methodically.
Build Resilience
Building resilience requires careful planning for any emergency. Utilities must assess what kind of external impact is likely. Companies must be fully aware of network capability and vulnerability. This requires a solid understanding of the places in the network that need addressing, either due to age, failure to upgrade, or being in a high-risk area. Using GIS, utilities can consume external impact data from as many sources as possible in advance and then use it to align that information to network weaknesses. Useful data includes demographics, equity, and topography. They can form a complete model for network vulnerability using GIS spatial analysis.
Respond with Real-Time Information
When utilities face an unfolding situation like the discovery of a wildfire, they must have the required infrastructure in place, ready at any moment to execute a coordinated, well-planned response using well-established applications and analytics. These include comprehensive situational awareness dashboards populated with real-time data feeds. Once damage happens, they must craft real-time damage assessments, deploy mobile resources to monitor progress and manage the flow of information. Finally, utilities must have the capability to ensure a safe and equitable work plan to minimize disruption during the event. As an emergency incident, such as a flood, unfolds, the utility shifts into response mode. As the event matures, the utility must do many tasks continuously while maintaining safety awareness.
Preserving situational awareness constantly during the event is crucial, as damage assessment and analysis for resource allocation take the front seat. Predicting short-term needs for restoration to optimize limited mobile resources becomes vitally important, as do monitoring progress and sharing the results with the media and stakeholders. As damage reports are pumped into the GIS, utilities carefully coordinate and optimize field resources, tree crews, and dispatchers to provide a smooth and orderly response process.
The utility should also have the equity profile of its service territory in the GIS. This data enables it to ensure and communicate a response sensitive to vulnerable communities’ needs.
People understand that shutting off gas mains and switching off power during emergencies is necessary. However, continually sharing fresh information is equally important. What people remember most during a major crisis is how well (or not so well) they were kept informed. GIS maps act as a universal visual language of understanding.
The host of tasks requires a grasp of the role of location in data gathering, analysis, and dissemination. ArcGIS provides the tools to do all three.
Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) distributes natural gas to about six million customers. Its service area has experienced a variety of natural disasters. Responding better to future natural disasters was one of the drivers leading SoCalGas to implement an enterprise GIS. It supports all functional areas and roles. It also supports sharing and collaboration. It proved its worth during a natural disaster shortly after implementation. Damaged gas lines were secured in record time. The restoration operation took 28 days—much less than before. Potential disasters were avoided, and residents were kept safe.
Recover by Rebuilding, Coordinating, and Sharing
Now that the fire is contained, the sun is shining, the floodwaters have receded, and the long and arduous work of rebuilding begins. Many of the same processes are in place during the event. Three master processes dominate, depending on location and the data gathered during the response phase. They include the following:
- Priority analysis—Damage assessment is complete. Now, utilities manage how best to dispatch crews and restore critical facilities. They need to order materials for restoration, which might take days or weeks.
- Workforce execution—This can be a logistical nightmare. Utilities make difficult choices, such as which areas to work on that are more critical than others.
- Recovery communication—People are restless. The lights are out, water and gas may not flow, and communication is limited. Businesses are shuttered, and roads and bridges are impassable. Thus, frequent communication is mandatory.
GIS optimizes work assignments by location, leveraging spatial analysis to allow the best execution of the work in the right areas at the right time.
Delivering the Answers for Decisive Action through GIS
Emergency management requires a new way of thinking to get the most out of the GIS. It’s a science-based way of problem-solving that integrates all the available locational information, whether from engineering, facility, real-time, network, or environmental data. GIS and the geographic approach bring this information together and help utilities better understand—and predict—critical events.
“Understanding precedes action.”—Jack Dangermond, Founder and President, Esri.
A geographic approach sets up a framework for action by directly applying all the available knowledge in meaningful ways into a utility’s workflows. Since most of the work involves location, an enterprise geographic information system enables this approach. It allows utilities to measure things in very focused ways, make maps, and visualize, understand, and predict the future. It’s also an environment where employees, from senior management to mobile workers, make better decisions through geographic understanding in support of their actions. Using GIS, emergency management teams can ensure that information is shared efficiently and effectively, facilitating a coordinated response.
Download the free eBook for more details about how GIS Enables Emergency Management.