August 28, 2025

20 Years After Katrina: From Paper Maps in a Parking Lot to Drones and Real-Time Disaster Response

By Mike Cox and Ryan Lanclos

Fire Chief Scott Olsen can’t stop thinking about Hurricane Katrina. In 2005, as a planning section chief on FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue Incident Support Team, he found himself in a Sam’s Club parking lot in Jefferson Parish, right next to New Orleans where nearly everything was flooded, searching for maps of the city’s streets. “We ended up getting a bunch of spiral bound New Orleans street guides and tore them all apart and taped them up—that’s how we created our division assignments,” he said.

It was chaos. Teams searched the same flooded neighborhoods multiple times while missing others. People were later rescued in areas responders thought they had cleared. That experience made Olsen, now leading the Boone County Fire Protection District and Missouri Task Force 1, passionate about maps, drones, and other situational awareness tools to guide rescue teams.

Twenty years after Katrina, Olsen’s Missouri Task Force 1 is testing revolutionary approaches to disaster response. They work inside Guardian Centers—an 830-acre training facility in Georgia that looks like a disaster movie set. Built by first responders for first responders, the facility provides realistic post-disaster environments (see sidebar) where teams can test technology, build coordination skills, and learn from past failures.

This year, they tested drones and the latest version of the Search and Rescue Common Operating Platform (SARCOP) that is built on geographic information system (GIS) technology with funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate. The exercise wasn’t about brute force—breaking through walls or removing rubble. It was about precision mapping and a level of situational awareness that turns chaos into coordinated action.

Drones Assisting First Responders

While many first responders still debate whether to add drones to their operations, the Boone County Fire Protection District and Missouri Task Force 1 make drones central to their strategy.

“The most difficult things for us to determine is what’s the scope of the disaster,” Olsen said. “The drones are able to give us a very quick visual.”

Missouri Task Force 1's search and rescue equipment trailer displays decades of federal disaster deployments, from the World Trade Center in 2001 to recent hurricanes, showing the evolution of search and rescue capabilities over more than two decades.
Search and rescue drone operations require careful coordination and safety protocols, with designated landing zones and trained pilots managing aerial reconnaissance missions that provide crucial situational awareness for ground teams.
At the Guardian Centers, the simulated flood scenario benefits from a drone perspective for aerial reconnaissance of flooded structures, allowing teams to practice coordinating water rescue operations in realistic conditions.

Jason Warzinik, IT/GIS division director for the Boone County Fire Protection District, leads the Disaster Situational Assessment and Reconnaissance (DSAR) team—a specialized unit that puts drones in the air as one of the first steps of any disaster response.

The DSAR team operates with certified drone pilots, GIS specialists, data analysts, and communications experts. They deploy incident command vehicles equipped with ruggedized tablet computers, satellite internet connectivity, and large-format printers. Their drones help conduct reconnaissance missions—including looking for survivors—to direct ground crews to where they’re needed most.

During this year’s Guardian Centers exercise, the DSAR team used drones to quickly perform tasks too dangerous for humans. They flew aircraft through collapsed buildings filled with simulated hazardous materials.

“We can send a drone in and at least know what hazards we might encounter and how many people we’re dealing with inside that need to be rescued,” Warzinik said.

Thermal cameras affixed to the drones help locate victims through debris while specialized sensors detect dangerous gases. Live video streams let incident command assess conditions and supervise as teams on the ground navigate treacherous terrain.

From Scattered Dots to Systematic Sweeps

The difference between twenty years ago and today is striking. During Katrina, rescue operations relied on paper maps, with teams marking progress by hand and often following haphazard search patterns. This evolved to the use of GPS units to document search progress until as recently as 2018, however, this was still a relatively inefficient process and did not provide real-time situational awareness.

Now, SARCOP creates a shared map showing exactly where every team has searched, what they have found, and which areas still need attention. Used nationwide at the local, state, and federal levels, the software is developed and maintained by the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS (NAPSG) Foundation, in close coordination with FEMA.

This drone-derived 3D model of the Guardian Centers training facility demonstrates how modern search and rescue teams can quickly create detailed digital representations of disaster sites for tactical planning and coordination.
This view shows the complexity of coordinated search operations, with multiple teams, worksites, and search segments all tracked simultaneously to ensure thorough coverage and avoid gaps.
Side-by-side comparison shows how SARCOP's digital coordination interface transforms complex training scenarios into organized search operations, with the left panel tracking team movements and the right showing the actual Guardian Center facility layout.
Modern search and rescue operations can now document structural monitoring points with precision using survey equipment, helping teams track building stability during collapse operations and ensuring responder safety.
SARCOP's photo viewer integrates drone imagery directly into the operational interface, allowing commanders to access real-time aerial reconnaissance photos at specific locations throughout the training facility.

During Hurricanes Helene and Milton in fall 2024, over 100 response teams coordinated through SARCOP, documenting 246,756 damage observations and 18,274 resident interactions across six states.

The real power comes from integration. Drone imagery, aerial photos, and incident situational awareness information flows directly into SARCOP, in real time. When a drone spots a potential survivor in need of assistance, the location appears instantly on every rescuer’s map. When structural specialists identify dangerous areas, those hazards get marked for all teams to see.

Jared Doke, director at NAPSG Foundation, explained how drones have changed the way teams make critical decisions. “For example, you’re taking a boat down a river for a water rescue, and you get to a flooded area where there’s a fork in the river. Do you go left, or do you go right? You can pop a drone up and send it ahead to know if you can get below a bridge or if there’s a blockage.”

Learning from Every Mission

In Georgia this year, teams tested SARCOP version 10, which introduces a new concept called “work sites”—areas requiring sustained attention from multiple specialist teams. These are locations where, as Doke explained, “they’ll send a drone team in first, then they bring in structures specialists to assess the safety of the building, then a rescue squad may shore it up, and then once it’s shored, they bring a canine team in to search for people.”

This sequential approach ensures the most impacted locations get the most thorough attention, with each team building on the work of those who came before.

Training at Guardian Centers extends to the next generation of emergency responders. DSAR small unmanned aerial system (sUAS) pilot and GIS specialist Chad Sperry, director of the Western Illinois University GIS Center, brought students there. “The opportunities that they get are just phenomenal,” Sperry said about the hands-on experience. For Sperry, this isn’t about technical training—it’s about sharing the camaraderie of the responder community and preparing students for the fast pace and accuracy required when lives are at stake.

Chad Sperry a DSAR member from Western Illinois University prepares drone equipment for the Guardian Centers training exercise, demonstrating how academic institutions collaborate with search and rescue teams to advance emergency response technology.
Night operations showcase thermal imaging capabilities, with search and rescue teams using drones equipped with heat-sensing cameras to locate people through their body heat signatures.

Using SARCOP, teams do more than coordinate current disaster operations—they build knowledge for the future. Archived data helps them understand search patterns and improve response times. “We can look at our resources we had in past incidents, how long it took us, and then use those metrics for the next hurricane,” Doke said. This direct feedback also helps NAPSG Foundation to improve future versions of SARCOP, based on real-world experiences and lessons learned.

This evidence-based approach helps answer critical questions: How quickly can teams search disaster-damaged neighborhoods? How many buildings can they check per hour? What resources will the next disaster require?

The Future of Coordinated Response

The most promising developments combine and integrate a variety of tools and perspectives.

As Warzinik noted, “We’re using ArcGIS Survey123 forms for safety checklists, ArcGIS Field Maps, SARCOP, and a lot of GIS technology for managing drone data and these valuable images and videos.”

The integration of leading technologies creates new capabilities. Teams share a common operating platform that transforms disaster zones from chaotic scenes into mapped, measured environments where real data informs every decision.

The result? Faster, more effective responses. Safer operations. More thorough searches. And ultimately, more lives saved.

In a world where disasters seem increasingly common, this coordinated approach offers something invaluable. It gives responders the accuracy and shared awareness they need. That’s a far cry from tearing apart gazetteers in a parking lot in New Orleans surrounded by flood waters.

Learn more about how emergency managers use GIS to better prepare for and respond to disasters, and how Esri’s Disaster Response Program offers assistance to communities.

A Shared Hurricane Katrina Origin

The Guardian Centers facility was born from Hurricane Katrina’s failures. Creator Geoff Burkart worked in Louisiana during Katrina’s aftermath, helping rebuild communication networks. Shocked by the government’s struggle to coordinate an effective response, Burkart envisioned a place where teams could practice together before disasters strike.

Built at a former Cold War missile plant south of Atlanta, the 830-acre facility includes collapsed buildings, underground subway tunnels, and the ability to flood a whole neighborhood to a depth of eight feet. Missouri Task Force 1 makes yearly visits to this training ground, part of Chief Olsen’s successful efforts to secure state funding.

One state representative noted that providing funds to support Missouri Task Force 1 “is a completely non-partisan issue” because “everyone fully knows the great work that they do for our country.”

Guardian Centers brings together teams from across the country—federal task forces, specialized units, and university students—to test new technologies and refine coordination protocols.

Mike Cox

Mike Cox is Director of Fire & EMS Solutions at Esri where he advocates for fire and EMS agencies to leverage geospatial information and technology to achieve their response and recovery goals. As a member of the Public Safety Industry Marketing team, he works collaboratively with GIS professionals to promote the broad use of Esri’s ArcGIS platform within fire and EMS. Mike recently retired from the Henrico County, Virginia Fire Department after 27 years of service. He served as the Deputy Chief with responsibilities including operations, emergency management, planning, accreditation, budget, and human resources. He was also a member of the Central Virginia All Hazard Incident Management Team, was the technical rescue team leader, and served as a haz mat specialist on the Virginia Department of Emergency Management’s regional hazardous materials team.

Ryan Lanclos

Ryan Lanclos is Esri’s Director of National Government and Public Safety Solutions and a subject matter expert on geographic information system (GIS) technology for emergency management. He helps organizations deploy GIS to improve preparedness and leads the global Disaster Response Program, which provides GIS support during disasters. A former appointed member of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) National Advisory Council in the US, Lanclos currently serves on the International Advisory Board of Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) for Japan and the XPRIZE Wildfire Advisory Board. He has also served as Missouri’s first geographic information officer (GIO), GIS advisor for the Governor’s Homeland Security Advisory Council, and Director of State and Local Government at the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS (NAPSG) Foundation. Lanclos holds a Master of Science in Cartography and GIS from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Bachelor of Arts in Geology from Centenary College of Louisiana.