user story
The 5.5-magnitude earthquake that struck Zagreb on March 22 found many public and private buildings unfit to withstand its force. Because the City of Zagreb is a longtime ArcGIS user, local Esri distributor GDi was called immediately to assist. With one expert permanently on-site and several helping remotely, GDi activated the Esri Disaster Response Program, with several hundred ArcGIS Online licenses.
The first priority for the City of Zagreb was to enable residents to report the damages caused by the earthquake. A Survey123 form was created in less than a day, resulting in more than 30,000 citizen reports that were fed into several ArcGIS Dashboards. This enabled a common operating picture of the situation in the field and the prioritization of activities like chimney removal and roof repairs.
Customer
City of Zagreb, Emergency Management Office
Challenge
Damage assessment needed to be performed following a major earthquake.
Solution
ArcGIS Online apps were used to collect data, report and assess building damages, and plan recovery activities.
Result
With the use of the ArcGIS platform, staff increased efficiency and improved the quality of decision-making during a major emergency operation.
After two days of non-stop work and sleepless nights, GDi, UHS, and HCPI teams deployed a Collector app for damage assessment crews, which immediately increased the effectiveness of their operations and provided valuable information back to the city decision-makers.
Due to the elongated novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown, damage assessment crews had to be particularly risk aware when conducting their work, which only added to their stress.
As ArcGIS Dashboards contained critical damage assessment information, view-only access was provided to key stakeholders, like firefighters, the city gas utility, and other city departments, so they could better coordinate and prioritize their activities.
As data volume and the number of ArcGIS apps used for data collection, data cleaning, and analysis quickly grew, ArcGIS Hub was used to organize all of the data into a meaningful overview of the available information.
Damage assessment data was integrated with the city's 3D ArcGIS model, creating easy-to-understand visualizations of the hardest-hit areas. As the damage assessment effort continued, reconstruction planning started. Preliminary damage assessment data from the field was combined with City of Zagreb's GIS for spatial planning to run different reconstruction scenarios for potential donors and creditors.
Damaged buildings in Zagreb, ArcGIS Dashboard of building damages as reported by the citizens
The ArcGIS platform deployment provided the following key benefits to the City of Zagreb’s earthquake response:
· Increased efficiency and improved quality of decision-making in a major emergency operation
· Flexible, configurable, and scalable solution that was quickly deployed
· Real-time tracking and coordination of field teams
· Increased transparency and collaboration among different stakeholders with view-only access
Damage Assessment data integrated live with City 3D Buildings Model
Dashboard used to monitor damage assessment team progress
The ArcGIS Collector app enabled damage assessment teams to use smartphones to gather information in the field that we could instantly analyze at HQ. Rapid data collection was a huge efficiency boost and reduced exposure to COVID-19 infection for the assessment crews. Many thanks to GDi and Esri!