Emergency Management and GIS - A Recipe for Success

Last week, I attended the Florida Governor’s Hurricane Conference and presented a workshop session alongside Carley Fitzgerald. The topic was GIS in Disaster Management, and it was the first time I’d been given an opportunity to speak almost entirely about GIS. I leaned in hard and shared lessons learned on how to build an effective, efficient, and productive GIS capability as an executive leader.

The session received rave reviews. Carley showcased her GIS wizardry skills (yes, I’ve coined that term), and I focused on organizational management issues. But unlike other presentations that emphasize the need for additional funding to improve a technology capability, we highlighted other ways in which leaders can change the way they think and work to ultimately advance their organization’s utilization of GIS. This blog post highlights the major points of the presentation.

Three Main Ingredients ?

It's important that emergency managers and GIS professionals work together. Admittedly, while emergency managers cannot do their jobs well without GIS, the collaboration between the two professions is limited and surface-level. Through my own research, observations, and testing, I’ve identified several ways to improve our interactions and have started sharing my insights with others.?

First, we need to lay the foundation for what GIS is and what it can do. Yes, it’s a technology, it’s a tool, and it’s also a science. But, since joining Esri, I’ve come to learn that GIS is more like a philosophy—a theory that acts as a guiding principle for our behavior, where we choose to live, and where we decide to shop, dine, and order grocery delivery services. And GIS enables the geographic approach to problem solving by providing us with the tools for measuring, visualizing, analyzing, predicting, planning, and communicating those decisions to put things into action.

Despite its utility and the value it brings to our everyday lives, in emergency management, our use of GIS has trended towards three flavors: 1) hazard maps; 2) dashboards; and 3) surveys. But the technology can and should be applied throughout the entirety of our programs. So naturally, the first question we should ask ourselves is, "Why?" What is keeping us from fully implementing a technology system that most organizations have already invested in?

Referring back to my research and observations, the response to that question boils down to three main ingredients: 1) Communication. 2) Skillsets. 3) Leadership Investment—and I don’t necessarily mean more funding.

The recommendations listed below are straightforward, actionable, and are designed to be implemented into your programs with ease. So, let’s examine each ingredient and identify ways in which organizations can begin reaping the benefits of improved interactions between emergency managers and GIS practitioners.

Ingredient #1: Communication

I’m comfortable enough to admit that, as an emergency manager, I have had a really hard time understanding all the technical jargon that comes with conversing with GIS practitioners—all technologists, really. Prior to joining Esri, I found it challenging to follow conversations about workflows, applications, configurations, hardware, software, etc. I wanted to understand the details so I could fully implement the technology, but the communication gap always brought me back to the place I was most comfortable operating in—asking for a map and a dashboard.

The result of this communication gap impacts the effectiveness and efficiency of our programs in a variety of ways:

• We end up working around each other and only engage when we need to. You can witness these awkward interactions most often in the emergency operations center (EOC) or when we’re conducting a risk assessment. Emergency managers’ requests for GIS support are largely reactive, usually occurring post-incident. And in the case of a risk assessment, those efforts typically consist of mapping hazard boundaries against the location of critical infrastructure. And that’s pretty much where our interactions end.
• Emergency managers stick to what we know, which means we ask for maps and dashboards. Rinse and repeat.
• Without proper communication, data analysis is not baked into all phases of the emergency management lifecycle. Which means…
• We are vastly underutilizing a technology system that we’re likely already paying for.

What are some ways in which we can improve our lines of communication to get better results?

• Emergency managers and GIS practitioners need to engage in frequent conversations outside of the EOC. In this, we need to acknowledge the technical barrier we both face when talking to one another and remove the technical jargon from the conversation. Emergency managers don’t always know the specific GIS products or solutions to ask for, and GIS practitioners don’t always understand the entire mission of emergency management to offer creative solutions. Acknowledging these barriers and pushing through conversations—albeit awkward—is the only way to reach the other side.
• Emergency managers need to ask the right questions, and they need to ask for a menu they understand. When faced with a wicked problem, ask your GIS practitioner to provide you with options in a common language that doesn’t reference products, hardware, or software. Need some ideas? Check out this list of questions to ask your GIS practitioner.
• Think outside the box and ask yourself, “Do you really need a map for that?” ArcGIS is a system that has the capability to display geospatial information in graphs, charts, link analyses, 3-D models, tables, maps, and more. Emergency managers should challenge their GIS practitioner by asking for a variety of ways in which to visualize data. In the end, you’ll have a product that tells a more compelling story relative to the problem you’re trying to solve.

Ingredient #2: Skillsets

This lesson learned is deeply rooted in my experience working for a large urban area emergency management agency. I distinctly remember at one point we had to backfill our GIS staff position. During the interview process we only asked the candidates to give examples that validated their experience with maps and dashboards. Other than additional workplace and team environment questions, that was the limit our technical questions reached.

In retrospect, I now realize that these question sets were a direct result of the communication gap mentioned above, because we only asked about the things we were familiar with. And in the end, all we did was maintain the program’s capabilities instead of advancing them—even after investing in a new hire.?

I’ve since learned that there are myriad other skillsets that are equally important, and I implore my emergency management colleagues to learn from my mistakes. My recommendation is to validate and confirm that each GIS candidate possesses these additional skillsets, at a minimum:

• Ingenuity and proof of being an autonomous problem solver. Ample time is a luxury in the EOC, and emergency managers don’t have enough time to run through the minute details of each task—it’s why we always ask for a map. It is vitally important that your GIS practitioner be able to listen and participate in conversations in the EOC, go back to their workstation, and create solution options based upon what they heard. Their proficiency with the technology should be advanced enough so that they are able to listen to a problem set, vague or detailed, and be creative enough to produce a variety of solutions to meet the needs of leadership.
• Executive-level briefing skills. The art and science of GIS require the ability to tell a story. The workflow of the technology is such that the practitioner identifies data and information feeds, analyzes them according to a methodology they’ve set within the ArcGIS architecture, and then creates a visual product to tell the story. That story then informs policy changes and actions. Emergency managers should leverage their GIS practitioner in this process and ask them to brief their process, product, and outcomes.
• Computer programming. In some cases, GIS products can accept raw data feeds and create a solution on the backend without direct alteration by the practitioner. But in most cases, organizations prefer to tailor their solutions to their community, or the specific problem set they’re trying to solve. Tailoring, otherwise known as configuring, a product, may require computer programming and coding skills. The more advanced output you’re seeking, the higher the likelihood of needing some degree of coding. So, if you want your organization to fully utilize and implement the technology system you’ve already invested in, your GIS practitioner must have experience in some, or all, of these programming languages: Python, R, SQL, JavaScript, Java, and C++. Note: Complete fluency in coding is not necessarily required, but some experience and familiarity are key.

Ingredient #3: Leadership Investment

Given the recent cuts to federal grants and budgets that will undoubtedly impact emergency management organizations, allocating additional funding to any initiative at the state, local, tribal, and territorial levels will be a challenge in the future. And since some of these grants are passed through to non-profit and private sector organizations as subrecipients, increased investment opportunities will be limited there as well. Taking that into consideration, my recommendations are focused on an investment of time and priorities.

Misperception of a Tradecraft

After two years of research and observation, I believe the main issue plaguing the emergency management industry that keeps us from fully utilizing the technology is a misperception of the GIS tradecraft. We tend to think GIS practitioners only make maps, and that limits our thinking in terms of other ways to leverage their skillsets and the technology.

In the previous section, I quickly outlined the process that GIS practitioners follow. First, they identify data feeds, either open source, from third-party providers, or their own native data sets. Second, they collect, collate, and analyze the data based on a methodology that aligns with the problem set, and they determine and monitor the data against thresholds and essential elements of information set by executives. Third, they organize the data into a story, and then they share that story via a product or solution that informs policies and actions.

Think: Data. Analysis. Then, So What?

This process mimics the same workflow that intelligence analysts follow. So, the challenge that I’d like to issue to emergency managers is to start thinking of your GIS practitioners as frontline intelligence analysts. By adjusting your mindset, I’m confident you’ll find other areas of your program where their skillsets are needed.

Prioritize Your Time

Leaders also need to intentionally carve out time to research and understand what their technology systems can do. Learning from my own experiences, I relied on my team’s recommendations regarding technology investments without spending much of my own time exhausting all options. The primary issue for me was bandwidth and time availability because I didn’t have any extra to spare. Understanding that many emergency managers experience the same issues, my suggestion is to intentionally spend 30 minutes a week researching one single technology system. During this time, determine what it can do, what it can’t do, and what’s most important to you and your program. Then, move to a different system to research the following week. Not only will you become more familiar with technology, but you will also be better informed leading into vendor contract negotiations. And 30 minutes is a relatively reasonable amount of time to carve out of a weekly schedule.

The Leadership Table

Invite your GIS practitioner to the leadership table. I realize this may not be the first position you think of when determining seats at the table, but it’s their absence that is negatively impacting your program’s efficiency and production.

Conversations at the leadership table often circle around details of the wicked problem you’re trying to solve. Leaders will identify thresholds and essential elements of information that they care about, and they’ll typically acknowledge external barriers and influences that may impact a desired outcome. Gaining access and exposure to these conversations will improve your program’s utilization of GIS, simply because the practitioner will have a better understanding of the nuances and caveats that inform a decision. If they are autonomous self-starters, problem-solvers, and have the necessary GIS and computer programming skills, they will take this information and create a variety of solution sets that the leadership team can leverage for decision-making purposes.

Society used to say that “technology is the way of the future.” In 2024, it’s safe to say that technology is here, and it's in large part, the tool we use to live our everyday lives. Fully leveraging and utilizing ArcGIS is achievable by all emergency management organizations, big or small. All it takes is a concerted effort to communicate effectively, hire the right skillsets, and properly invest our time and priorities in the right direction

.