Disaster Response: GIS for Public Safety (Paperback)

Description:

Earthquakes bring down cities, wildfires ravage millions of acres of land, floods wash away homes and lives, volcanoes devastate towns and villages, hurricanes roar down on populous coasts, tornadoes rip mile-wide paths up and down the countryside. Mother Nature does what she does, and in the face of her fury, a comprehensive and effective system of preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery seems an unlikely possibility.

Geographic information systems, however, are just that, providing the means not to conquer Mother Nature, but to get out of her way, and soften her blows when we can't.

From deciding where to build new fire stations and in which stations to keep ladder trucks, to monitoring disasters as they happen, in real time, with only a PC and an Internet connection, from mapping wildfires tens of thousands of acres in size with GPS equipment and a helicopter, to processing raw data and providing information products around the entire Pacific Rim, GIS is making emergency management a faster and more accurate means of helping people cope.

 

 

Table of Contents:

Introduction

Forest Falls: A model of a mudslide

3-D modeling illustrates the conditions that led to a lethal flood on a California mountain.

Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue

Answering the old questions of where to put firefighters and their equipment in a new way.

Pacific Disaster Center: The story of an organization

Coping with the biggest and most disaster-prone area of responsibility in the world.

Marin County: Mapping risk

Using GIS to analyze vegetation, fuel, weather, assets, and risks.

E Team: Emergencies and the Internet

Real-time disaster management with just a PC and an Internet connection.

Winston-Salem: Integrated Network Fire Operations

Hooking up a city, its people, and its emergency services.

National Fire Protection Association: Firewise Communities

Prevention versus cure: Helping communities learn how to protect themselves.

2015: A Montgomery County, Maryland, odyssey

Coping with rapid growth in an eastern seaboard power corridor.

Extending the Pulaski

The disastrous fire season of Summer 2000 results in a nation-sized wildfire GIS.

The Willow Incident: GPS and zero containment

Using helicopters, satellites, and GIS to stay on top of a 65,000-acre burn.

Ouachita Civil Defense Agency: Project Impact and the disaster-resistant community

An award-winning grassroots approach to disaster preparedness.

Los Angeles County Fire Department: Hospital closed!

Figuring out what to do when an emergency hospital is shut down.

The Northridge quake: Picking up the pieces

A baptism of fire for GIS operations in the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services.