The City of Eugene’s utilization of Esri's industry-standard GIS platform provides an opportunity for seamless data sharing and integration, thus preparing them for potentially larger-scale emergency events such as earthquakes. In this response, the POS GIS team began pulling data from their regional partners from Eugene Water & Electric Board (EWEB), Lane County, the City of Springfield, and Oregon Emergency Management. This regional GIS data, coupled with the tree inventory and many other City GIS data layers, helped better inform incident commanders and response crews of where there was likely to be considerable damage and potential electrical hazards.
During this 2024 ice storm, new features within Esri’s suite of products were implemented to increase efficiency and staff safety. When an electrical line was involved with a given work order, the geofencing feature in Field Maps Designer was utilized to alert any staff within a 750-foot radius. A custom push notification alert was sent to their mobile devices indicating that they may be close to a potential electrical hazard. Alerts remained in place until certified EWEB staff verified that the line was turned off and the area was safe for the on-site crews to mitigate the tree hazard. Additionally, for tracking the debris cleanup and hazard mitigation effort, POS GIS staff implemented location tracking of their on-site crews by utilizing the “my tracks” option in Field Maps. The storm scouts drove up and down each street and their route was tracked all day, allowing them to verify where they had scouted for tree hazards. This real-time data feed also streamlines the efficiency of the response efforts. All response staff can look at the map and see who is closest to a community member request and make geographically based decisions on who is responding to a specific work order. The necessary number of licenses and newly implemented functionality were available to Eugene due to a recent acquisition of an Esri enterprise agreement (EA).
The Emergency Response Dashboard was an extremely vital tool for the team to track the storm response efforts, but even more so for the city manager and executive managers. The dashboard provided city leaders with a holistic real-time view of the response effort, critical insight into the recovery efforts timelines, and provided assurance that the team's efforts were being managed effectively and efficiently.