Building a Regional GIS-Based Emergency Reporting System in California

Marin County Office of Emergency Management led a group of 14 local governments to transform how they meet reporting obligations to the State of California when emergencies occur.

During emergencies, the ability to communicate with neighboring counties, or operational areas, in a timely manner is critical. For Marin County and 13 other operational areas in Northern California, years of inefficiencies in sharing information laterally and up to the State of California during disasters and emergencies were a key driver of the new set of emergency reporting solutions and workflows.

“Emergency managers are inherently communicative and collaborative—we need to be in our line of work. But the system we had didn’t allow for that, and we realized we needed to close that gap,” said Hannah Tarling, emergency management coordinator, Marin County Office of Emergency Management.

During an incident, each operational area answers a set of questions from the state that are related to the event—wildfire, earthquake, power outage, flooding, or high winds—using Microsoft Word documents. These documents are not visible to neighboring organizations, meaning Marin County staff could not see the status of other agencies’ response operations until the information was aggregated and emailed back.

Recognizing the need for a more efficient and integrated system to manage situational awareness sharing, Marin County and its partners identified geographic information system (GIS) technology as the ideal solution to bridge these challenges. With overwhelming support from the group of operational areas, the solution was highly anticipated by emergency management professionals in the region.
 

Marin County Office of Emergency Management, which had secured grant funding from Bay Area Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI) to support the project, led the effort to transform the process of reporting emergency information across operational areas. The solution was needed to:

• Provide visibility into neighboring organizations’ emergency status and response
• Improve communication and transparency between operational areas
• Reduce time spent by emergency managers gathering information
• Enhance visualization of incidents using interactive maps

In need of expertise and capacity, the county engaged Pro-West & Associates, a GIS consulting firm, as its partner on the project.

“We decided early on that a GIS-based system was needed to achieve our goal,” said Tarling. “Esri tools were ubiquitous across our field and end users, so we could anticipate a minimal learning curve. They are user-friendly and are location-centric, which is critical during emergency response. Pro-West brought the expertise we needed to make the project successful.”
 

Together the county and Pro-West team pressed forward, tackling each component that would make up the region’s office of emergency management (OEM) center.

First, the team built a dataset in ArcGIS Pro based on the extensive set of Essential Elements of Information (EEIs) that existed in a spreadsheet administered by the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal Eos). This component would form the foundation of all other pieces, with data collected to drive the other solutions being deployed. In all, approximately 400 fields were created to capture all information required for all incident types. From ArcGIS Pro, the dataset was migrated to ArcGIS Online, then a survey built around it using ArcGIS Survey123.

With so many fields available, efficiencies were created by showing only relevant fields, dictated by the incident type (such as wildfire, earthquake, or winter storm); as the incident’s severity; and whether certain conditions are met as the user progresses through the survey. This simplifies the form, minimizes the number of fields to be filled out, and expedites the process for the emergency manager.

Next, the team created an OEM solution. Built using ArcGIS Experience Builder, this solution is based on Esri’s emergency management solution and customized to meet the unique needs of the operational areas involved in the project.
 

To address operational picture needs, the team used ArcGIS Dashboards to create a singular dashboard of current incidents in the region. The dashboard includes information on utility impacts, shelter locations and capacity, heating and cooling centers, evacuations and curfews, response activities, and reported damage. Tabs at the bottom allow the user to explore key data about specific types of incidents.

ArcGIS Experience Builder was applied to build the All Incident Map, which allows users to explore incidents via a user-friendly interactive map. Users can navigate to an incident and click to discover pertinent information about that emergency.

Within the OEM solution, users can view all EEI reports via the EEI History application, which includes tabs that users can select to view all or the most recent reports. Filtering capabilities help users find information faster, and a print function allows the information to be exported and printed.
 

The solutions connect with other trusted sources of information, such as PG&E for utility-related issues, US Geological Survey (USGS) shake data for earthquakes, and Esri’s data services for weather. Access by representatives of each operational area is managed via ArcGIS Online, leveraging groups and organizational accounts to allow personnel to understand the status of incidents and response activities around them.

“This piece is absolutely critical to navigating emergencies on the ground,” said Tarling. “We had no way to do this in an organized manner prior to this project, and the ability to now see what’s going on with our neighbors in near real time is highly valuable. It will make us more efficient during incidents and gives us better information to make decisions.”

Throughout the project, the team held meetings to keep leaders and stakeholders informed and to address any questions or issues that came up. Once the system was ready, the team presented the new GIS-based emergency information reporting system to the 14 operational areas and cities for feedback and refinement.

The team also provided training to all end users, who were engaged in the process and ready to embrace a more modern and efficient way of communicating emergency information.

Together, the new system gives emergency managers within the region a complete picture of ongoing incidents.
 

Marin County Office of Emergency Management and its regional partners plan to enhance the system further. Their plans include:

• Conducting more training sessions for users
• Using Power Automate capabilities to send email notifications to key personnel when information is updated or requested
• Creating an additional dashboard that shows critical information on one screen for staff in emergency operations centers during incidents
• Updating EEI print reports to include only relevant information (Currently, all information is included in the print export.)
• Launching a site—built using ArcGIS Hub—as a landing page for executive-level users to view active incidents and information specific to individual operational areas

In the long term, Marin County and the rest of the group hopes to see the new emergency reporting system implemented more widely across operational areas in California.

“I hope that we can see the expansion of this system to more emergency managers and operational areas, so we can all benefit from better and faster information sharing and communication during disasters in our state,” said Tarling.