businessCONNECTION@TU

Division of Economic and Community Outreach

April 2008, businessCONNECTION@TU

Creating Real-Time Situational Awareness with EMMA©, the Emergency Management Mapping Application©

In an emergency, precise, timely communication is absolutely essential. Thanks to GIS and Web technologies, dynamic maps offer common operating pictures that not only deliver precise information faster than the spoken word, but also can be shared by multiple jurisdictions across a range of emergency management communities. Maps that integrate layers of disparate geospatial data provide situational awareness about vital issues such as traffic conditions, hospital bed availability, real-time weather conditions, and the number and locations of shelters.

EMMA© brings together real-time data from a variety of sources, including traffic (Maryland Dept of Transportation), weather (AWS), hospital status (Maryland Institute of Emergency Medical Systems Services), and results from modeling (NOAA-generated nuclear plume scenario shown).

Responding to the obvious need for an application capable of creating maps—common operating pictures—with real or near real time data, the Center for GIS (CGIS) developed EMMA©, the Emergency Management Mapping Application©.

“Seeing emergency event data on a map offers a different perspective from seeing the same data in a list,” according to Matt Felton, CGIS Director. “Maps can effectively convey how seemingly disconnected events are, in fact, spatially related. That’s where EMMA© becomes very powerful.”

EMMA© Creates a Common Operating Picture with Real-Time Data

EMMA© is a secure, content- and tool-rich Web-based mapping application that integrates real-time data from weather stations, transportation systems, public health resources, stream gauges, and many other sources. EMMA© gives emergency management personnel the ability to display and analyze information relevant to all stages of emergency incidents.

EMMA’s© ability to integrate real time data is key. All emergency events begin as local incidents and often scale up to regional, state, or even federal disasters. As escalation occurs, public preparedness sharply declines, and coordination among local, state, and federal agencies becomes even more complex and challenging. As emergencies escalate in scale and complexity, the need for data, tools, and interoperability increases.

Incident Scale and Complexity

With EMMA©, responders can use a standard Web browser to identify incident locations from the field using GPS data, generate location-specific reports, and visualize incident locations via a map, among other functions. EMMA© includes map visualization that serves as online GIS software so “casual users” can navigate, analyze, geocode, and query data, as well as generate reports. GIS staff can then work on more complex issues.

EMMA©’s Role Expands across the Nation

In August 2005 Hurricane Katrina proved to be a worst-case disaster for Louisiana and Mississippi. Emergency responders from Maryland assisted with disaster recovery efforts, having gained first-hand experience during Hurricane Isabel in 2003. To SEOC quickly discovered that response teams needed data about the geographic locations where they were to assist. The CGIS development team gathered relevant map data for the Gulf Coast region and information about the hurricane. On September 15, CGIS and MEMA launched “EMMA Katrina” at the SEOC. EMMA Katrina’s integration with WebEOC®, an interoperable crisis information management software (CIMS) package, allowed incident location and response team locations to be tracked in near-real time based on inputs into WebEOC.

In 2006, CGIS deployed a version of EMMA© as part of a regional hazard identification and risk assessment effort for the Washington, D.C. National Capital Region. The project was guided by the Metropolitan-Washington Council of Governments (MW-COG) GIS subcommittee and has served as a key element for a regional GIS basemap that spans jurisdictional boundaries around Washington, D.C.

In 2007 the Delaware Division of Public Health included EMMA© as part of its Integrated Public Health Preparedness System. CGIS also deployed EMMA© at the Virginia Department of Emergency Management and the municipalities of Richmond and Charlottesville in 2007.

Where no single software solution can meet emergency management’s range of needs, a suite of interoperable applications can. Along with a CIMS package and reliable, shared data sources, EMMA© offers a neutral ground and the visual language to help response agencies communicate and make decisions together. Warren Campbell, Assistant Director of MEMA, put EMMA©’s visual capabilities into real-world perspective during a recent discussion about the application’s effectiveness. “In the old days, we could look at an alphabetical listing of hospitals on a spreadsheet that would auto-update and color-code hospitals based on their status. Scattered throughout the alphabetical listing there might be three hospitals showing "red". Normally, three “reds” out of 40+ hospitals isn’t significant. But when you place all the hospitals on a map and the three “red” hospitals are clustered together, it becomes immediately apparent, even to those not familiar with the area, that there is a serious problem. Add that to the Power Outage data layer that shows 40,000 customers without power in the same location as the hospitals, and now you have a jump on the real problem that needs to be addressed. Data from utility companies being seen in real-time along with data from hospitals being seen in real-time together in one picture—believe me, in our operations centers, when it comes to GIS, we get it,” Campbell said

EMMA© puts GIS mapping capabilities in the hands of the casual user, thus freeing up limited GIS staff time for more advanced assignments. During Hurricane Isabel in 2003, power outage status maps were generated every few hours from Excel spreadsheets. Now, EMMA© integrates real-time data from six separate utility companies and displays outage status automatically with a single click that launches the map.

With access to relevant data, availability of adequate training for emergency personnel, and deployment of user appropriate tools, EMMA© contributes significantly to prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery activities.

Division of Economic and Community Outreach
Office Location: 8000 York Road

Phone: 877-TULink-4U
E-mail: businessconnection@towson.edu