Accelerating Trusted Product Access, Evaluation and Use to Support
Community Lifelines
Abstract
Satellite imagery to rapidly develop maps of historical flood hazard and
current inundated areas over large spatial coverage is indispensable in
supporting situational awareness for improved debris estimation,
transportation impacts and damage assessments. However, how best to
utilize these maps as actionable information during flood disasters and
for flood disaster response assistance is less clear. Furthermore, the
integration of any satellite data from an “untrusted” (non-mandated)
source into the operations chain and response protocols of a mandated
agencies such as FEMA, PDC (PDC is already pulling some DFO-DSS layers)
or the UN WFP would be a non-trivial procedure. These agencies desire to
prioritize support and resource requirements for community lifelines.
(Safety & Security; Food, Water & Shelter; Health & Medical; Energy
(Power & Fuel); Communications; Transportation; and Hazardous
Materials). The majority of these lifelines can be impacted by floods.
The Global Flood Observatory’s (DFO, University of Colorado Boulder) web
map server and its associated mobile app (DFO-Floods) is a resource for
global extents of floods now delivered as map products via web services.
This flood decision support system (DSS) serves flood maps along with
other trusted geospatial data to the global disaster response community.
However, acceptance of the DFO product line as a trusted information
source requires additional tests to assess its performance in
combination with the respective response process of agencies around the
world. This would allow moving the product from a high Application
Readiness Level into an Operational Readiness Level (ORL) for agency
trusted data implementation. This paper reviews success examples of the
DFO flood layers, illustrates the newly released mobile app and
discusses the need for trusted flood map products and services to
support the global disaster response community.