GIS, Lifeline Utilities and Emergency Management

From GisWiki

• Author: Gavin Treadgold, Kestrel Group
• Published: 2006-02-21
• PDF Download: http://gis.org.nz/downloads/WeLG-GIS-Report-20060221.pdf

Contents 1 Executive Summary 1.1 Spatial Community 1.2 Lifelines 1.3 CDEM Groups 2 Project Origins 3 Subsequent Activities 3.1 Events Attended 3.2 Presentations 3.3 Seminar 4 Overview of Current Situation 4.1 LINZ Geospatial Strategy 4.2 Spatial Interoperability Data Project (SIDP) 4.3 Flood Review Team Recommendations 4.4 Other Developments 5 Discussion 5.1 Exercises 5.2 Private data likely to remain that way 5.3 Lack of immediate threats 5.4 Size is an issue 5.5 Awareness and training 5.6 Availability, usage and value 5.7 Assessment of GIS capability and capacity 5.8 Amateurs are raising the bar 5.9 Information Systems and GIS 6 Anticipated Developments 6.1 Scenario 1: Lack of engagement 6.2 Scenario 2: Central Focus and Interoperability 7 Recommended Actions by Lifeline Utility Organisations 7.1 Individual Lifeline Utilities 7.2 Other Possible Activities 7.2.1 Internet Collaboration (Simple) 7.2.2 Lifeline Reconnaissance Framework (Complex) 7.2.3 GIS Cluster for Emergency Management (Complex) 8 Summary 9 Acknowledgements 10 References 10.1 Publications 10.2 Websites

Executive Summary

In 2002, the Wellington Lifelines Group (WeLG) considered the question of whether it should more actively encourage greater usage of GIS in the development of mitigation programmes and response activities, and to possibly become involved in a technical facilitation role.

With spatial technologies – especially use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and advanced Internet mapping services – becoming more readily available to the average user, there are greater expectations for this technology or similar to be used in the management of response and recovery to a disaster. This increased public expectation in itself is enough to support the idea that WeLG encourage greater use of GIS across the four R’s (reduction, readiness, response and recovery).

However, the second part of the desired outcome – that of technical facilitation – has proven to be about issues far broader than just Lifelines, and even the emergency management arena.

Firstly, the issue of availability, usage and value of most fundamental spatial data is an issue for the whole of the country and is currently being addressed by the Government’s Geospatial Strategy. Naturally, there are datasets that will be specific to CDEM/Lifelines and these should be managed through usual processes. In addition, some datasets will always remain private and access may have to be carefully negotiated.

The key areas that each group should lead are suggested as follows. It is emphasised that all of these processes will involve close collaboration with the other groups.

Spatial Community

The majority of ‘technical’ facilitation should be left to the true technicians of spatial information – the GIS analysts. Moves are underway within the spatial community to develop guidelines for spatial information in emergency management. This will of course be an inclusive process that closely involves CDEM and Lifelines – but it is important that the technical perspectives are lead from within the spatial community. This community should also address issues of capability – including training and professional development.

Lifelines

The area of impact and damage assessment of critical infrastructure is perhaps the key area where Lifelines Groups should actively advocate for progress. It is becoming increasingly apparent that there is a need to be able to rapidly assess the broad impacts of an event on infrastructure, and communicate a summary of the impacts in spatially-aware data formats to other organisations involved in response and recovery, as well as to the broader community.

CDEM Groups

CDEM Groups are best placed to lead the integration of spatial capabilities into the structures used for response and recovery. There are many existing structures and processes in place that a spatial capability needs to be carefully woven into. Issues of capacity are best covered by the CDEM Groups, as spatial professionals may be able to utilise pre-existing arrangements between local government organisations.

Finally, the most important step for all is to test and assess the abilities of organisations to share spatial information in far more detail than currently occurs. It is only through the doing that the real issues with be identified and resolved.

Project Origins

In December 2001, seminars in Wellington and Auckland by James Hall from New York City demonstrated the vital role that GIS played following the attacks on the New York World Trade Center in September 2001.

These seminars highlighted the important role GIS can play in co-ordinating utility response and recovery activities – and the corresponding lack of interoperability of GIS information across the utility sectors in New Zealand.

Following James Hall’s presentation, the Wellington Lifelines Group established a GIS Project with the following objective:

To establish the nature and extent of use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) by WeLG member organisations, and the range of GIS platforms in use or under development

The desired outcome of the project was:

… an indication as to whether it is appropriate for WeLG to encourage greater usage of GIS in the development of mitigation programmes and response activities, and to possibly become involved in a technical facilitation role.

At that point in time, the plan was separated into two stages.

The first stage consisted of conducting interviews with identified individuals from within WeLG membership, and any others identified as relevant to the project. These interviews would allow the project team to understand the current range of GIS systems in use, or under development, and this information would be used to determine the appropriate context of the survey questions.

Once the context had been determined through the preliminary interviews, a survey was to take place of WeLG member organisations to assess their current capabilities in terms of managing spatial information for emergency management purposes. This was going to be used as a guide to determine if WeLG should pursue a facilitation role in working towards greater inter-operability of WeLG members’ systems for emergency management.

The first stage interviews revealed a number of different concurrent projects and issues that led to the decision not to advance with the survey at that point in time; rather the focus would be maintaining a watch on developments.

Subsequent Activities

The majority of information has been obtained through attending various events, discussion with individuals at these events, and meetings. The key outputs of information have been two presentations, a seminar, and this summary report.

Events Attended

A number of events have been attended as part of this project: -

• Greater Wellington Natural Hazard Information Workshop – January 2003, Wellington.
• Greater Wellington GIS Workshop – 20 February 2003, Wellington.
• New Zealand Utilities Advisory Group StreetWorks Portal Presentation – 22 August 2003, Wellington.
• ESRI User Group Conference – 8-10 September 2003, Wellington.
• Spatial Sciences Institute GIS Incident Management Workshops – 7 October 2004, Christchurch and 13 October 2004, Wellington.
• Land Information New Zealand Geospatial Strategy Consulting Workshop – 26 November 2004, Christchurch.
• Geospatial Information & Technology Association Seminar – 22 February 2005, Auckland.
• ESRI User Group Meeting – 5 May 2005, Christchurch.

Presentations

Two presentations have been given on the project: -

• Greater Wellington GIS Workshop – 20 February 2003. This workshop prompted some discussion and comments were made that a more detailed meeting needed to be held to further explore the issues.
• ESRI User Group Conference – 9 September 2003. This was a half-hour presentation given primarily to the GIS analyst community, rather than those involved directly in emergency management and lifelines. It was primarily an outreach presentation.

Seminar

On 30 November 2004, a joint seminar was run by the Wellington Region Civil Defence Emergency Management Group and WeLG. The workshop received approximately 50 attendees across a mix of GIS, lifelines and emergency management personnel. A brief overview of the seminar programme is provided below:

• Introduction – Tim Davin (Chair, New Zealand Utilities Advisory Group).
• National Geospatial Strategy – Jerome Sheppard (Team Leader Policy, Land Information New Zealand).
• GIS Applications in Hutt City – Mark Justice (GIS Analyst, Hutt City Council).
• Cityview – Laura Nicol (Wellington City Council).
• Standard Incident and Infrastructure Icons – Malcolm Macfarlane (New Zealand Fire Service).
• Emergency Planning and Lifelines – John Gibson (GIS Analyst, Greater Wellington).

The format and content in the seminar was topical and well received. In addition to question time being allocated for individual presenters, there was reasonable time set aside for an open floor discussion following the presentations that proved to be very valuable.

Overview of Current Situation

There is a fair degree of change occurring in the monitored domain resulting from different drivers. Three significant events are shaping up to have an impact on the use of GIS by Lifelines for Emergency Management purposes.

LINZ Geospatial Strategy

In November 2004, LINZ released a discussion document outlining some of the issues being investigated with regard to government spatial information. This was followed up by a roadshow that presented the Geospatial Strategy and solicited comment. These comments were collected in December 2004, and a Summary of Submissions report was released in April 2005. There are a number of associated geospatial projects currently underway within LINZ that will impact on any GIS projects for Lifelines and Emergency Management: -

• Geospatial Strategy – a Whole Of Government approach to New Zealand’s geospatial data.
• New Zealand Geospatial Metadata Standard – currently a recommended eGIF standard, is likely to become mandatory for government agencies within 12 months.
• Geospatial Information Online Access Scoping Study Project – a project to investigate providing a portal for discovering and obtaining access to government spatial data.
• Long Term Strategy for Topographic Information Online – this should be released soon with a view to defining how LINZ will provide topographical products and services.
• National Address Register (NAR) Project – this aims to provide an authoritative database for address points, road centrelines and place names and is a component towards the now mandatory requirements of the Emergency Services and Government Administration (ESA) standard.
• Oversight of National Datasets – this is being considered as part of the geospatial strategy.

It may be months to years before some of these projects provide direct benefits to Lifeline Utilities and CDEM Groups – but their national significance will warrant continual monitoring of their progress.

Spatial Interoperability Data Project (SIDP)

At the GITA seminar held in Auckland in February 2005, a presentation was made on the Spatial Interoperability Data Project. This is perhaps one of the more exciting developments during the life of the WeLG GIS project.

This project is a Public/Private partnership between the Australian Government and an industry association of spatial software and data vendors in Australia. Starting in April 2004, the interoperability project has been recently completed a demonstration using disparate spatial data sources maintained within different organisations. The project showed that distributed systems can be connected using open interface standards provided by the Open GIS Consortium (OGC). This allows any vendors GIS software that supports OGC standards to provide consolidated access to various spatial data silos with relative ease. It should be noted that the project had a distinct emergency management focus, as the scenarios tested were flood and wildfire, with their associated spatial requirements.

Flood Review Team Recommendations

There are many salient points raised with regard to lifelines and GIS in the Reid Report by the Government Flood Review Team into the February 2004 flood event.

• Development of a single, consolidated mapping GIS – whilst this may be a desirable goal, such a centralised system could suffer loading issues and be constrained by bandwidth during response. A more appropriate model is that of the SIDP project mentioned previously, where the focus is on organisations maintaining their own core data sets, and allowing discovery and networking of various mapping servers as required. The key is being able to find the datasets when required, and being able to interoperate with them. In this way, an organisation also maintains ownership and security over their own datasets and chooses the level of detail published to authorised users – this is particularly relevant to commercial Lifeline companies. GIS also provides the ability to support contractors brought in from outside the region to more quickly become familiar with the topography and infrastructure networks. Alternative arrangements will be necessary for those situations where Internet communication is not possible. It is important to point out that the identification and sharing of relevant fundamental datasets for response and recovery needs to occur in as part of readiness.
• Development of systems that support single data entry – It is clearly inefficient to have different organisations attempting to collect the same data and information. More readiness planning is required to ensure that reconnaissance and damage assessment is co-ordinated to ensure that resources most effectively gather and share lifelines information.
• The expectation that requested information will be customised – the number of information requests during response to the floods highlighted the issue that it is not always possible to customise reports as requested. The corollary is that organisations therefore need to consider making pre-determined aspects of collected information available in a relatively raw format to allow end users to customise the data to their needs.
• GIS is critical in communicating to an affected community – a map can convey a great deal of information in a short time. Greater consideration needs to be given to using maps as a public information tool during an emergency – for example, communicating network status and expected restoration timeframes.
• There is a lack of awareness of databases and spatial information available – there is currently no list of fundamental datasets, nor the ability to browse a directory of available spatial services. Some of the LINZ projects may assist these critical shortcomings but there are currently no dates to commit to.
• Police were poor at communicating road closure decisions and status to Roading Control Authorities; few examples of agencies sharing and integrating data – this issue may be able to be resolved through a multi-agency GIS cluster to investigate the management of spatial data in an emergency.
• Consistency and accuracy of spatial information – organisations have widely differing needs of spatial information. For example, Land Information New Zealand’s focus is on topographical data at a 1:50,000 scale, whilst local authorities are focused on spatial information that is useable at the 1:10,000 scale. The use of spatial information at different scales has an impact on the accuracy required in sampling information. These issues will need to be resolved to ensure that the accuracy and consistency of spatial information is appropriate for all applications – likely to the level of highest accuracy required. This is vitally important where spatial data is going to be distributed to many organisations and may be utilised from local to national scales.

Other Developments

In addition to the three key projects previously identified, there are other relevant projects underway. These include: -

• Development of guidelines for integrating a mapping capability into a CIMS structure for response and recovery. This includes covering aspects of processes and personnel – including training and capacity issues related to trained GIS personnel. They will likely be based on experiences and work undertaken in Australia by Jenkins and Garvey (2005). These guidelines are being led by Karl Majorhazi (New Zealand Fire Service) and John Gibson (Greater Wellington Regional Council). This project is currently in the inception phase.
• Development of symbology suitable for emergency management – being led by Malcolm Macfarlane (New Zealand Fire Service). Most work on this project took place in 2004 - 2005.
• The development of a commercial bureau service to integrate lifeline utility information focused around the roading network. Whilst the focus of the proposed service is on routine business, there is the potential for the service to be utilised for emergency management purposes.

Discussion

In the process of finalising this report, a number of additional observations have arisen and will be covered briefly.

Exercises

It is important that GIS is integrated into CDEM Group exercises in future, and that critical assessment is made of the GIS capability and capacity (especially for trained and experienced personnel) for response and recovery. This should be a detailed assessment that would likely include the organisations shared with, the mechanisms used for sharing spatial data, and explicit identification of issues and difficulties in sharing data, for example. Taken to the extreme, this could include exercise control injecting a CD containing relevant data and assessing how long it takes to utilise the information contained therein.

Private data likely to remain that way

Whilst the geospatial strategy is likely to make taxpayer/ratepayer funded data more accessible, it is highly unlikely to make all relevant Lifeline data available because of commercial sensitivities. Agreements between relevant organisations will still be necessary in some cases to share appropriate data. Templates such as Memorandum of Understanding could be developed by Lifelines Groups to support this process, as well as identifying the desired spatial information.

Lack of immediate threats

It was suggested at a recent conference that the presence of credible threats of terrorism to infrastructure in Australia and the United States has encouraged focus and the development of systems and sharing processes. The corollary is that the lack of such an obvious threat in New Zealand may be holding back the development of a GIS capability because of competing priorities.

Size is an issue

New Zealand is in an enviable position relative to many other countries – we occupy a relatively small geographical space, especially when compared to Australia and the United States. This has the potential for us, as a country, to develop more comprehensive data sets as we have a much smaller space to manage. This cuts both ways however, in that we are likely to have a smaller taxable base to draw upon, in particular when funding remote sensing.

Awareness and training

There will need to be two-way engagement between GIS analysts and CDEM Group staff/Lifeline utility managers. Both groups need to increase awareness of their role in respective groups. In addition, it is likely that both groups will need specific training for response and recovery. For example, EOC personnel will need some training in the role and use of GIS. Likewise, GIS personnel will need an introduction to the Co-ordination Incident Management System (CIMS) – the management structure within which they will be operating.

Availability, usage and value

There is a clear relationship between these three factors when referring to data (Stuart Nixon, Spatial Sciences Conference, Melbourne 2005). The more accessible, or available, a given data set is – the more likely it is to be used. The more a dataset is used, the greater value it will hold. Likewise, a dataset that is restricted or unavailable will be used infrequently and will hold little to no value – except to the owner, especially if the terms on copying and distribution are overly restrictive. Nixon identified copyright, licensing, and business models as the three greatest threats to creating valueable datasets because they limit both availability and usage. There is therefore a very urgent need for taxpayer funded organisations to make spatial data available under open and non-restrictive licenses to ensure that they are widely adopted and become truly valueable.

Assessment of GIS capability and capacity

There appears to be a lack of awareness about not only the spatial data sets that are available, but also around the ability to field enough professionals during response and recovery to provide not only a mapping service to emergency managers, but to also manage and maintain the vast quantity of information. It may be necessary in future to undertake a more detailed national survey of the GIS capability and capacity of central Government agencies, CDEM Groups and Lifeline Utilities. Parallel to this might be the development of some key performance indicators that are linked to the following key aspects: -

• Technology – What hardware and software is available?
• Data – What spatial data sources are owned? What spatial data sources are obtained from other agencies? What data sources are needed but access is not available?
• Communications/Access – How is your spatial data shared? Is access provided via the Internet?
• Planning/Processes – Has the use of spatial data been incorporated into your planning processes for readiness, response and recovery? Have processes for receiving and sending information with other agencies been implemented?
• People – How many trained professionals are available? Are you able to provide GIS services 24x7 during response? Do you have relationships and processes to manaage additional support from outside of the affected area?

A similar survey was undertaken by Grant and Gibson (2005), but this was limited to local authorities and did not involve central Government agencies, lifeline utilities, non-governmental organisations, volunteers or owners of spatial information.

Amateurs are raising the bar

Spatial technology is being made available to amatuers and the community at a rate previously unseen. Free mapping software such as Google Maps, Google Earth and Microsoft Windows Live Local are the most popular examples. Following Hurricane Katrina, computer programmers created simple yet powerful mapping applications (‘Google map mashups’) using Google Maps to allow people to post information about locations and people sightings. At the same time, handheld GPS receivers have dropped to very afforable levels (under NZD$200 for entry-level units) and are starting to be embedded in numerous electronic devices including PDA’s and mobile phones. More expensive models now have auto-routing capabilities – but these are hamstring by the lack of authoritative road data in New Zealand that can be easily redistributed. In the extreme – the route chosen by a GPS could depend on which roading dataset is installed in it, as in the case that made the media in 2005 of the Australian couple that was directed to drive up the Rainbow Road (which is gravel, contains a locked gate, and has 4WD-only sections) when driving from Christchurch to Nelson.

The increased awareness and accessibility of powerful spatial capabilities to the population at large is only going to increase community expectations of the role and use of spatial technology and information systems during response and recovery. Likewise, the community will have little sympathy for CDEM Groups that eschew the use of spatial data, or sharing of spatial information, including to provide information to the community at large.

Information Systems and GIS

Whilst the term spatial has been liberally used throughout this document to maintain focus, this should not imply that there is an arbitrary distinction between spatial information systems and other information systems. They are in fact one-and-the-same, as nearly all data and information stored in an information system has some element of location in space. The only difference is often that the data that has a spatial attribute doesn’t make this available in an easily accessible manner and some transformation is required – for example, by converting an address stored in a text field to a latitude and longitude that can be plotted on a map (this particular process is called geocoding).

GIS therefore is not a standalone system, but needs to be fully integrated with an organisations information system in the broadest sense.

Anticipated Developments

It is anticipated that there are two broad scenarios that may evolve in the next couple of years. It should be noted that a number of issues holding back the sharing of spatial information are issues of national significance and are unlikely to be solved by actions taken at a local level, and will be reliant upon decisions made at a central government level – in particular the National Geospatial Strategy.

Scenario 1: Lack of engagement

Utility organisations could maintain an internal focus with little-to-no desire to share spatial information with other organisations. CDEM Groups, whilst accepting and recognising the benefits from better spatial data co-ordination may have higher priority projects allocated for time and resources per their Group Plans. Groups may also signal that the development of a significant IT system to support the sharing of spatial information is better lead from Central Government. There may be significant discrepancies between Lifelines, Emergency Management and GIS personnel as to how such a system could operate.

Scenario 2: Central Focus and Interoperability

The desire to utilise spatial information for emergency management prompts champions to develop at both national and regional levels. From a lifelines perspective, it is essential that a hybrid approach is developed where work on interoperability is done both at a national and local level to avoid some of the issues associated with national utilities having to work with up to 16 CDEM Groups. Lifeline Utilities, Emergency Management and GIS personnel are mostly in agreement as to the structure to be utilised for co-ordinating spatial information during response.

Technically, there are a number of different structures that may support the desired outcome of Scenario 2.

Firstly a centralised structure may be desired, but there will be management issues such as management of intellectual property, access and security controls, not to mention capacity issues during response such as server loading and bandwidth limitations.

The second option therefore suggests that an approach focused on creating a distributed and interoperable structure is the most desirable from an operational perspective, but also for management issues. The ability of each organisation to maintain management of their intellectual property is essential to any platform that supports the sharing of spatial information. Naturally, a distributed structure is also more resilient against failure.

Finally, a hybrid approach may prove suitable to cover those situations where Internet communications are severely restricted because of the impacts of the event. A distributed system is the desired mode of operation, however a fallback to standalone systems utilising standardised spatial data sets allows each organisation to operate independently of others until such time as communication allows sharing of spatial information gathered during response. In addition, the development and distribution of pre-packaged CD/DVD’s containing maps to stakeholders may be a useful means of creating awareness and encouraging further sharing.

Recommended Actions by Lifeline Utility Organisations

The WeLG Executive determined that while the activities in the GIS arena outlined above have been mutually beneficial to WeLG member organisations and other agencies, active project work in this area would conclude at the end of June 2005.

It is however proposed that WeLG maintain a watching brief on the development of GIS interoperability. Some of the projects under development will take years to be realised, but it is important that their progress and significance is continually monitored. It is important to have a clear understanding of the various projects, and their inter-relationships, to identify and understand any potential gaps that may develop – as they certainly will.

Individual Lifeline Utilities

There are activities that Lifeline Utilities can undertake to further prepare their organisation to share and use spatial information during response.

• Training Lifeline Utility personnel and contractors in the importance of gathering information about other utility networks during reconnaissance.
• Develop internal capability to rapidly consolidate reconnaissance and network status information into a practical spatial format to be distributed to other Lifeline utilities and CDEM Groups during response. This information ideally will not be detailed network information, rather it will be, for example, polygons describing areas without power, or marking road closures. Consideration should be given to testing extraction of spatial information from the business systems to enable sharing with other organisations.
• Investigating lightweight GPS applications to allow quick and simple gathering of digital information by field workers. This will significantly speed up the digitisation of network information, and consolidation during response. Ideally these applications will be constructed as part of routine business processes, and may be in development or already deployed.

Other Possible Activities

There are additional activities that could be undertaken or participated in to maintain momentum. These vary from simple to complex in scope. It should be noted that some of these actions may be picked up by independent actors.

Internet Collaboration (Simple)

WeLG could establish an ongoing facilitation role in this area through the creation and ongoing management of an email list provided for general discussion on Lifelines, GIS and Emergency Management. This would make it easier for WeLG and interested parties to share information to interested parties. Ideally, such a list would be provided for any interested parties in New Zealand to participate. The implementation of an email list is a simple option that would assist WeLG in maintaining a watching brief on developments in the area in a cost effective manner as the monitoring cost is effectively shared by all list participants. Other simple Internet-based collaborative techniques such as forums or wikis could also be utilised.

Lifeline Reconnaissance Framework (Complex)

The Wellington Region CDEM Group is well placed as part of its existing project on regional emergency reconnaissance to work with WeLG member organisations to develop a shared framework for reconnaissance that will ensure that all lifeline utility personnel collect appropriate information during initial impact and damage assessment. Ideally the information would be captured digitally, assisted by GPS, to enable rapid collection of digital information that can be consolidated into an overall lifelines ‘picture’ at the CDEM Group level and shared with all appropriate responding agencies. The framework would need to have processes in place to ensure that regular checks are made to update the network status, as well as target reconnaissance to those areas that have not yet been assessed.

GIS Cluster for Emergency Management (Complex)

The Ministry of Civil Defence Emergency Management is promoting an expansion of the cluster concept that started with Lifelines and CDEM Groups. It is perhaps timely to consider the creation of a spatial information cluster whose focus is on how spatial information would be managed for the CDEM Groups and Lifeline Utilities, but also linking this information to the relevant Central Government agencies involved in response and recovery.

Summary

From a technical perspective, the technology exists now to be able to easily distribute and share spatial information. The real work to be done lies with the people, processes and data.

When the project started, the lack of engagement between GIS personnel and Lifelines/ Emergency Management was noticeable. Over the past couple of years however, there is more engagement occurring between the disciplines, and more awareness around the issues exists. The workshops held since mid-2004 are recognition of the role GIS has to play in response and recovery, and testament to the multi-disciplinary work required for this to be realised.

Secondly, there are key issues surrounding spatial data that need to be resolved, only some of which have been outlined in this report. The lack of authoritative fundamental datasets will hopefully be partially resolved through the National Geospatial Strategy – however the differing needs between local and central government may lead to unfulfilled needs at a local level. The mandate and level of financial support provided to LINZ will determine the extent to which central government is able to fulfil spatial data needs.

Returning to the focus of utilising GIS for response and recovery, processes are perhaps the most important factor. People, data and systems already exist but they are not being effectively utilised because the processes are not in place. The key work that remains to be completed revolves around the key response and recovery processes for: -

• The distributed collection of spatial information – which organisations are responsible, the techniques used and the accuracy required.
• The consolidation and redistribution of collected spatial information to all involved agencies – how the collected information is consolidated, stored and redistributed.
• The continued damage assessment of previously assessed areas, as well as pro-active targeting of areas yet to be assessed for damage.
• The full integration of a GIS capability into EOC structures.
• The training and exercising of personnel to undertake these tasks, as well as providing the capacity to support an ongoing operation with suitable trained personnel and equipment.

This work will require interaction and co-operation between CDEM Groups and Lifeline Utilities.

It is important to emphasise that the ability to use GIS efficiently across agencies following a major emergency still does not exist in Wellington, or New Zealand. As this capability is not only an essential tool of modern emergency management, but is increasingly a public expectation, it should remain a near-focus priority of all involved parties.

Acknowledgements

The willing and helpful contribution from people from a range of organisations has been gratefully appreciated. Particular acknowledgement is made of the information and valuable linkages provided by (alphabetical order) : -

• John Gibson, Greater Wellington Regional Council,
• Karl Majorhazi, New Zealand Fire Service,
• Peter Wood, Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management.

References

Publications

• Garvey, M.F. (2002). Investigating use of GIS in response to the attack on New York City.
• Gibson, John. (2005). Report on visit to SSC 2005 Conference, Melbourne.
• Grant, Helen and Gibson, John. (2005). Results of GIS in emergency management survey.
• Jenkins, A.B. and Garvey, M.F. (2005). A candidate management model for a GIS team during a large emergency event.
• Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management. (2005). A Cluster Approach for Civil Defence Emergency Management: Enhancing multi-agency relationships.
• Murcott, Richard. (2005a). Report summary on SSC 2005 Conference Presentations.
• Murcott, Richard. (2005b). Report on SSC 2005 Interoperability in Action Workshop.
• Murcott, Richard. (2005c). Report on SSC 2005 All-hazards Workshop.
• Murcott, Richard. (2005d). Report on SSC 2005 GIS for EM Workshop and EMSINA meeting.
• Reid, P., Brunsdon, D., Fitzharris, P., Oughton, D. (2004). Review of the February 2004 Flood Event.

Websites

• Australian Spatial Information Business Association
• Emergency Management Spatial Information Network Australia
• Geospatial Information & Technology Association – Australia & New Zealand
• Google Earth
• Google Maps
• Land Information New Zealand
• Microsoft Windows Live Local
• New Zealand ESRI GIS Users Group
• New Zealand Geospatial Metadata Standard
• New Zealand Recreational GPS Users Society
• Open GIS Consortium
• Spatial Interoperability Demonstration Project
• Spatial Sciences Institute