Emergency Management Archives

In 2020, the State of Nevada’s Department of Public Safety began discussing the possibility of using Esri’s ArcGIS disaster response and damage assessment solutions to support emergency preparedness, response, and recovery more efficiently and effectively within its Division of Emergency Management (DEM). With Blue Raster’s extensive knowledge on these configurable solutions, Nevada’s DEM selected our team to partner together to build out the Preliminary Damage Assessment (PDA) Tool utilizing ArcGIS in Nevada’s specific environment.

With the PDA Tool, Nevada’s DEM is able to:

Conduct initial damage assessments following natural disaster(s) or destructive event(s)
Capture the extent and severity of damage to property
Streamline evaluation of need for resources and acquisition of resources after disaster(s)
Aid emergency management
Collect damage reports
Perform initial assessments
Monitor the impact of disaster(s)
Provide critical information to stakeholders and the public

For the next few months, our team collected the necessary data to bring into the ArcGIS applications; configured and tested the disaster-management capabilities; and created several workflows in ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Hub, Survey123, and ArcGIS Dashboards that would soon be presented to Nevada representatives from the state and local levels, as well as tribal lands.

To successfully build out the services Nevada DEM needed, our team also collaborated with Esri to secure the purchasing of Surge Licensing activated through Esri’s Disaster Response Program and requested through the State. With Surge Licensing, the division can request as many additional licenses as needed during the time of a disaster response without having to manage a large number of users on a day-to-day basis.

Nevada DEM’s PDA Tool utilizes:

ArcGIS Online to host and serve out content to the applications within the PDA Tool—including ArcGIS Dashboards, Survey123, and ArcGIS Hub
ArcGIS Dashboards to provide a comprehensive, at-a-glance view of the data and monitor trends

Survey123 so data can be collected via forms that are built into the tool; this includes operational surveys that can be accessed through the Damage Assessment Content group

ArcGIS Hub which offers a public site for county and local users and an internal destination for Nevada DEM; it also serves as a platform for connection and engagement between government entities and residents and promotes resources and data that are useful to the community

ArcGIS Experience Builder which is the configurable solution Blue Raster used to build the PDA Tool web application

In 2022, once the PDA Tool was in a good place, Nevada DEM brought in stakeholders—who were county officials, DEM employees, and local community and tribal leaders—so our team could deliver a series of trainings in their Emergency Operation Centers (EOC). Blue Raster GIS Analyst Andrew Patterson traveled to Carson City and Las Vegas to provide on-site, day-long trainings at the Nevada EOCs. These sessions included hands-on demonstrations, out-in-the-field practice, and thorough documentation so attendees could take what they learned during the training back to their communities and teach other people how to use this beneficial tool.

“Providing on-site training for Nevada DEM was a fantastic learning and teaching experience. I was able to work directly with the DEM’s GIS project manager and lead grants coordinator to provide day-long trainings at both the Carson City EOC and North Las Vegas City Hall. We used these trainings to not only showcase and teach the Preliminary Damage Assessment Tool but to also provide education on damage assessment best practices and its importance.” – Andrew Patterson, GIS Analyst, Blue Raster

Be Prepared in the Face of a Disaster

Blue Raster excels in creating fully operational emergency-management solutions. Interested in learning more? Contact us today to tell us more about your needs.

It’s no secret that data empowers educated decision-making; however, with our rapidly evolving data landscape, this cannot be a stagnant process. As the need for real-time data continues to rise, the options that allow us to access the most current information only get better.

To offer this level of real-time data monitoring to ArcGIS Online users, Esri developed ArcGIS Velocity to integrate with IoT sensors, allowing users improved access to up-to-the-minute data. ArcGIS Velocity is Esri’s cloud-based Saas Solution for near real-time data streaming and Big Data Analytics. Similar to how Geoevent for ArcGIS Enterprise allows the ingestion and visualization of data streams, Velocity takes advantage of Kubernetes in the cloud to offer streaming and analytics of massive-scale datasets—that would otherwise be too large for analysis without dedicated computing infrastructure.

ArcGIS Velocity Brings Data Streaming and Big Data Analytics to Our Fingertips

ArcGIS Velocity allows users to configure data feeds from cloud service providers such as Azure and AWS, web messaging formats like HTTP and RSS, or directly from Automatic Vehicle Locator (AVL) providers, such as Geotab. Once a data feed has been established, the stream can be integrated directly into ArcGIS Online anywhere there is support for Stream Services.

Users can also use the established feed as a source in Velocity Analytics to enhance the feed with outside data sources or make on-the-fly calculations before being published as a Hosted Feature Service in ArcGIS Online. Enhancements include:

Adding indicators from Esri’s Living Atlas using spatial joins
Summarizing values from multiple sources to create a composite score or average sensor reading over time
Calculating motions statistics like compass bearing and movement speeds for AVL

Velocity also allows for multiple feature layers to be published from the same source, making it possible to keep a historic archive of all data collected from a feed for long-term analysis while also separately publishing the most up-to-date data.

Velocity’s Big Data Analytics gives users the ability to analyze massive amounts of data without the need for their own on-premises or cloud infrastructure. Taking advantage of Kubernetes to allow for scalable processing, users have access to Velocity’s cloud infrastructure to run large-scale analysis on data from sources such as:

Data in their own existing feeds and historic feature services
Hosted services published to the web
Datasets hosted in cloud storage—like Azure Blob Storage and Amazon S3

Big Data Analytics in Velocity gives users the ability to process massive datasets, including multiple CSVs from S3 hosting millions of individual data records, and create a predictive model of things like forest loss, crime hotspots, or future crop yields based on previously collected data.

Deploying ArcGIS Velocity for Blue Raster’s Local Government Clients

Blue Raster understands the value ArcGIS Velocity can bring to customers. Since 2020, we have been working with the City of Manassas Park in Northern Virginia to implement ArcGIS workflows and solutions citywide—supporting law enforcement, fire safety, zoning, public works, and more.

Manassas Park needed the ability to visualize AVL in some of their public safety vehicles. We were able to configure two feeds as an early concept for the city—making them an early user and success story for ArcGIS Velocity.

The first feed was processed from AVL units through Azure Event Hub to ArcGIS Velocity.
The second feed was for the city Computer Aided Dispatch that is served by an HTTP service using Azure Function Apps to prepare the data for ArcGIS Velocity.

The work for Manassas Park was even the focus of an Esri case study—published in the fall of 2022—highlighting the adoption of ArcGIS Velocity by a city government. This story has also been presented by Esri and Blue Raster at FedGIS 2023.

As the need for real-time data monitoring expands, Blue Raster is excited to share the success of ArcGIS Velocity for Manassas Park as we explore ways to increase the use of Velocity for more of the Manassas Park fleet. ArcGIS Velocity offers a unique product for real-time data visualization and incorporation into many applications on the ArcGIS Platform, as well as seamless integration into existing Cloud GIS Infrastructure with the added benefit of access to Big Data Analytics.

Real-Time Data Experts

As an Esri Gold Business Partner in the State and Local Specialty, Blue Raster is the service provider you can trust with your real-time data needs.

Contact Our Team to Learn More

Small City + Big Data = Time to Modernize IT

Manassas Park is an independent jurisdiction in Northern Virginia, approximately 30 miles southwest of Washington, DC. The city borders Prince William County and the City of Manassas. It is primarily residential in nature within close proximity to interstate and railway transportation into the heart of the Greater Metropolitan Washington DC area. modernize IT

The city had an aging, homegrown solution for their GIS data and wanted to modernize the system so that it would meet the current and future needs of City operations including tax assessment, public works, emergency response, parks and recreation, and zoning to name a few. Being a small city with an even smaller staff, the system needed to be easy to use and maintain for a team that did not include GIS professionals.

Creating a Town Square for Data

Blue Raster implemented Esri tools, including ArcGIS Online, Experience Builder, and ArcGIS Dashboards, to aggregate all data into a single cloud-enabled solution. Doing so meant users across city operations had access to data that could inform them of their planning and day-to-day operations.

Economic Dashboards show tax assessment growth over time as well as show revenue generated from meals tax and business licensees by neighborhood.
The parks department now has a single view into their multiple data sources. They can now access and view membership for the city-run waterpark, visitor numbers for that waterpark, and community center reservations in a single application.
The police can now overlay data from multiple ticketing systems (parking, civil disturbance, and traffic) to get a holistic view of where violations are happening.
Fire and rescue can now see 911 data to get a sense of any patterns in where and when calls come in.

First Step Toward Cloud

The city manager is using this GIS project as a pilot to show what can be done when the City utilizes the power of cloud technology. Pointing to the success of these applications, he hopes to gain buy in and funding for modernizing other areas of the City’s IT infrastructure to a cloud-based system.

Read the Esri case study about the use of ArcGIS Velocity in Manassas Park:

Law Enforcement in Manassas Park, Virginia, Tracks Vehicles and Calls for Service with Real-Time Data Solution

Ready to find out more?

Contact us to learn how we can help you modernize your data and IT infrastructure to help make critical decisions about public safety, recreation, economic investments, and more. Read about we helped other state, county, and city organizations with their efforts to modernize IT.

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While a large portion of the country and world is doing its part to stay indoors during the coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic, organizations like the American Red Cross continue to provide disaster relief. What do these efforts look like during times of COVID-19? To highlight these efforts, Blue Raster collaborated with the Red Cross to publish a new story map: How the Red Cross is Helping During COVID-19.

The goal of the story map is to showcase how the Red Cross has shifted its operations while continuing to fulfill their lifesaving work to alleviate suffering despite the pandemic. Additionally, since the coronavirus disease impacts different regions in different ways, the story map highlights what COVID-19 relief missions look like across the country. Just as important, it provides the reader with resources for how to help.

Red Cross StoryMap Details

To portray the significance of the Red Cross’s efforts, Blue Raster leveraged ArcGIS StoryMaps platform. We were excited to configure the new Navigation bar. This allows the read to skip the scrolling and jump to a section of interest. The new floating panel layout for the Sidecar allows the featured photos to tell more than a thousand words. In addition, the Express Map helps highlight the geographic breadth of the Red Cross’s COVID-19 response. Thanks to the photos provided by the Red Cross, the story map provides an intimate look into the interactions between the Red Cross relief teams and those being assisted during a time of strict distancing. View the full Red Cross StoryMap here: How the Red Cross is Helping People During COVID-19

In times of COVID-19, Blue Raster prioritizes helping organizations like the Red Cross tell their story in a meaningful and impactful way. Learn about COVID-10 Response efforts using ArcGIS. We are ready to assist your organization with the rapid setup of ArcGIS platforms that best suit your needs, such as Operations Dashboards, ArcGIS Hub, and Experience Builder, and more.

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