{"id":202982,"date":"2019-01-21T23:55:09","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T07:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=arcnews&p=202982"},"modified":"2019-01-18T16:57:54","modified_gmt":"2019-01-19T00:57:54","slug":"responding-to-a-hurricane-from-the-woods-and-being-ready-for-the-future-of-gis","status":"publish","type":"arcnews","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcnews\/responding-to-a-hurricane-from-the-woods-and-being-ready-for-the-future-of-gis","title":{"rendered":"Responding to a Hurricane from the Woods, and Being Ready for the Future of GIS"},"author":1432,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10372,401,13602],"tags":[163382,160542,309592,173302,195782],"arcnews_issues":[300072],"class_list":["post-202982","arcnews","type-arcnews","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gis-hero","category-government","category-natural-disasters","tag-arcgis-online","tag-county-government","tag-hurricane-irma","tag-operations-dashboard-for-arcgis","tag-survey123-for-arcgis","arcnews_issues-arcnews-winter-2019","arcnews_sections-gis-people"],"acf":{"short_description":"Jeremy Edwards did everything he could to help his community face and recover from Hurricane Irma. He even built an app while on a hike.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":null,"file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"To help Pasco County, Florida, prepare for, respond to, and recover from Hurricane Irma when it struck in September 2017, Jeremy Edwards, the county\u2019s GIS supervisor, pulled several 16-hour days in the emergency operations center (EOC). Totaling 160 hours in two weeks, Edwards had hardly seen his family or been outside.\r\n\r\n\u201cI needed two days off because my head was about to explode,\u201d he remembered. \u201cI wanted to go walk in the woods and take my dog and family out. So we went to a water management area where they have a lot of trails.\u201d"},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":203002,"image_position":"left","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Edwards, his wife, their son, and their dog were 30 minutes away from home and a couple miles into the woods when the head of the EOC called. One of the last things Edwards had done before he\u2019d left was create a simple app with Survey123 for ArcGIS to record the donations that were being received at donation centers set up throughout the county.\r\n\r\n\u201cI didn\u2019t really know if they were going to use it, but I thought I could whip it together pretty quickly and leave them with an option other than pen and paper,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\nThe county had used it. And now county commissioners were just hours away from giving a press conference where they wanted to show how many donations, and what kinds, had been collected.\r\n\r\n\u201cI let them know I was in the woods and that it would take a bit to get to the EOC,\u201d said Edwards. \u201cI told them I would turn around and try to get back in time for the press conference.\u201d\r\n\r\nBut then he had a revelation.\r\n\r\nIn preparation for Hurricane Irma, Edwards and his team had made a Survey123 app for the public to use to report any damage to their properties. Residents could fill out the form with the details of the damage, upload photos, and input their addresses.\r\n\r\n\u201cBy the time we were done, we got 15,000 entries within about two to three days,\u201d said Edwards.\r\n\r\nBut he was having a hard time downloading all the data and images. So he called Esri, and local government solution engineer William Meyers guided him through how to work with geodatabase replicas, which solved the problem. At the end of the call, Meyers showed Edwards how he could visualize all that data in a beta version of Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS. Edwards was only paying perfunctory attention.\r\n\r\n\u201cI\u2019m doing a million things right now,\u201d he recalled thinking, \u201cso I don\u2019t really have time to do that.\u201d\r\n\r\nBut in the woods, he thought: \u201cThey showed me how to do this dashboard thing. I\u2019ve got my phone. Maybe I can do this on my phone. [\u2026] If I do that, I don\u2019t have to leave; the commissioners get what they want, and more; and my wife does not kill me (double bonus).\u201d\r\n\r\nEdwards sat down on a fallen tree, logged in to ArcGIS Online, and started to create a dashboard. But the mobile version was different from the desktop version he was on when Meyers showed him how to use the app.\r\n\r\n\u201cI started sweating, thinking, \u2018I can\u2019t make it work,\u2019\u201d he said.\r\n\r\nThen he saw a button labeled Open Desktop Site, so he tapped it and was taken to a screen that had all the controls he remembered seeing on his desktop. From here, he also had access to the information from the Survey123 form that he needed to build the dashboard: the types of donations, the amount of money, what foods were perishable, and more. He quickly made different graphs that displayed these details for each donation site."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":202992,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"\u201cWithin 10 minutes, I had created a dashboard using the Survey123 live data, published it, and shared it,\u201d Edwards said. \u201cI emailed the link to the head of the Office of Emergency Management, Kevin Guthrie, and the EOC team and told them I would not be coming back in. ArcGIS Online, Survey123, Operations Dashboard, a phone, and 10 minutes\u2014bam, day saved!\u201d\r\n\r\nEdwards said that while this may have been the coolest GIS project he\u2019s ever worked on, it\u2019s not the most important thing he\u2019s ever done.\r\n\r\nA certified GIS Professional (GISP), Edwards got his start in CAD and was pretty good at it. He considered going into architecture, but he wanted to do more.\r\n\r\n\u201cAs I was doing CAD, I thought, I don\u2019t want to draw a building; I want to draw the world,\u201d Edwards said.\r\n\r\nHe took geography classes while he was in architecture school at the University of South Florida, and the correlation between people and space piqued his interest. So he got a bachelor\u2019s degree in human geography and a master\u2019s degree in technical geography.\r\n\r\n\u201cI just ended up being really good at it,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\nEdwards then landed a GIS job at the university\u2019s Center for Urban Transportation Research. While he was looking for data one day, he must have submitted a job application to Pasco County (though he doesn\u2019t remember doing that) because they called him and asked him to interview for a GIS analyst position. He eventually agreed to go in, so as not to burn any bridges in the small world that was GIS at the time, and he ended up taking the job.\r\n\r\n\u201cI like doing things that help the community,\u201d he said, \u201cand this is a good way to do it.\u201d\r\n\r\nEdwards was a GIS analyst with the county for about five years before he became a supervisor. In his time at Pasco, he has shepherded GIS from a make-me-a-map venture to an analysis-heavy endeavor. Whereas the EOC used to put GIS personnel on phone duty during hurricanes, GIS is now instrumental in responding to natural disasters.\r\n\r\n\u201cEvery storm we\u2019ve had over the last few years, we\u2019ve done a little bit more,\u201d said Edwards.\r\n\r\nHis team began contributing sincerely to disaster response activities in 2012 by using ArcGIS Server to make printed maps. The following year, Edwards and his team created web maps and apps. Next, they used Survey123 internally, and finally they rolled it out externally.\r\n\r\nNow, the public uses Survey123 to report damage, and Pasco County staff can see relevant geospatial information about each property\u2014including parcel value, commission district, and ZIP code\u2014on a dashboard. Edwards has convinced field personnel to use Collector for ArcGIS and building inspectors to employ Workforce for ArcGIS. He and his team have streamlined disaster operations so there\u2019s no duplicate data, and the Survey123 forms they use for hurricane damage assessments match what has to go to the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) for disaster assistance.\r\n\r\nEdwards really enjoys working in the EOC because he feels like he can make a difference. But he also likes the programming side of GIS.\r\n\r\nOne of his most valued projects is the map package creator he made for Pasco County\u2019s Environmental Lands Acquisition and Management Program (ELAMP). When Edwards took over as supervisor, one of the jobs GIS analysts had to do was create a set of nine maps for ELAMP that showed things like what the land is currently being used for, soil types, and whether there are any archaeological artifacts in the area.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt was something that really could have been automated and was a fun project to do,\u201d said Edwards.\r\n\r\nHe used ModelBuilder and ArcPy to automatically populate parcel numbers, project names, and intersects in the maps. To pinpoint specific soil types or zoning, the program zooms to the relevant areas, makes a PDF, zips all the PDFs up, and creates a map package. What used to take a whole day now takes 20 minutes.\r\n\r\nAs GIS supervisor, Edwards also oversaw the conversion of addressing from mainframe to GIS. And when the county implemented a new 911 dispatch program, he and his team had to make sure sheriffs and police departments could see where roads changed from paved to dirt, where there were gates, and other details. But the GIS team\u2019s addressing was intersection to intersection, and Edwards didn\u2019t want to keep two sets of geography.\r\n\r\n\u201cSo I scripted that and was able to put it together,\u201d said Edwards.\r\n\r\nHe used linear referencing to locate each event (a change in road structure, a gate) along the centerlines, measured these features, and modeled the topology to get the 911 dispatch program what it needed. And none of this affected his team\u2019s set of geography.\r\n\r\n\u201cNobody sees this, but without it, 911 calls don\u2019t get to where they need to go when you dispatch somebody,\u201d said Edwards.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s this kind of behind-the-scenes tinkering that electrifies Edwards and keeps him inspired.\r\n\r\n\u201cLearning GIS at the command line level, where you really just get into the nuts and bolts of it, I\u2019ve learned a lot,\u201d he reflected.\r\n\r\nIn the future, he said, \u201cGIS is going to be where you need it, when you want it.\u201d\r\n\r\nHaving made a dashboard app in the woods on his phone, Edwards is unquestionably well prepared for that."},{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Center","content":"Read other articles in the GIS Heroes<\/a> series.","snippet":""}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"\nResponding to a Hurricane from the Woods, and Being Ready for the Future of GIS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Jeremy Edwards did everything he could to help his community face and recover from Hurricane Irma. 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