Deepwater Horizon
Drew with US Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Robert Papp
Shortly after the Deepwater Horizon explosion and sinking, the ICP was established in Houma. As you can imagine, GIS was quickly a major component of the response. Beginning April 30, a team of ”GIS Smoke Jumpers” from across the USA deployed to Houma, LA to build and operate an enterprise-class GIS for the ICP. Waypoint Mapping’s Devon Humphrey served as the initial GIS Team Leader and was transferred to serve as Geographic Intelligence Officer for ICP Houma. Drew Stephens of The GIS Institute was named GIS Unit Lead. Mr. Humphrey served as liaison to Incident Command and NIMS-compliant system architect advisor, while Mr. Stephens recruited and managed a team of GIS professionals to operate the GIS Unit, most having 10-20 years GIS experience.
At first, GIS staff & products were primarily serving US Coast Guard task forces on the water, and overflight / plume mapping. The team quickly migrated away from the fragmented skills, flash drives and personal laptops, to a networked drive with a file geodatabase, then to an Enterprise SDE and ArcGIS Server. ArcGIS Mobile figured prominently into the overall design, and by last Friday, The Louisiana National Guard was posting data directly to a server from the field. There are now over 150 layers of base map and operational data served to users of ArcGIS desktop, a browser-based Flex viewer and a Google Earth app. The system, which would have normally taken a year or more to plan and implement, was fully operational in less than two weeks. Map requests were dominating the GIS staff time, so standardized map products were created on a schedule, each following a data deliverable to the team – for example, the twice-daily airborne SLAR imagery would be followed by a map product available from the document management team.
The range and depth of talent was truly remarkable. As the demand for GIS products and services grew, so did the GIS team, and its ability to deliver. Federal and Intelligence assets were put into play against the spill, as were staff. The GIS lab was a common stop by visiting Admirals, Captains, Colonels, and many others. The team had the honor of meeting various members of the Unified Command, including the outgoing Commandant of the Coast Guard (Admiral Thad Allen), Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Robert Papp, Area Command FOSC Admiral Landry, Admiral Watson, Tom Strickland (Chief of Staff for Interior Secretary Salazar), David Hayes (Deputy Secretary of Department of Interior), Jane Lute (Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security), representatives from the State of Louisiana Governor’s Office, Army National Guard, Air Force, US Fish & Wildlife and many others.
There are now many more senior-level administrators who understand the power of GIS! I just returned from 21 days of service, resting and standing-by to go back… Drew
Just getting links up now -
ESRI Map Viewers;
- Social Media Map – http://www.esri.com/services/disaster-response/gulf-oil-spill-2010/economic-impact-map.html
- Timeline Map – http://www.esri.com/services/disaster-response/gulf-oil-spill-2010/timeline-map.html
Coast Guard Pics – http://cgvi.uscg.mil/media/main.php?g2_itemId=841811
As a GIS professional who lives on the coast, I’ve been trying to find some real data about what’s happening. Are you posting your 150 data layers somewhere people other than BP and Fed official can see it?
Hi GAIA -
BP’s IT department is keeping the data locked-up tight – I’d urge you to ask your elected officials why this is true, and/or ask for the data under FOIA rules…
Since you said you’ve been primarily supporting the USCG and the LANG, and are listing off a steady stream of governmental folks instead of BP folks, where is that non-BP data being published?
If geospatially enabled data are published, GIS professionals from other disciplines could review and analyze. From a solultion perspective, many eyes on the problem, often lead to alternate solutions.
Is there plan to offer blocks of lets say 8-24 hours of work to volunteer GIS groups who could work remotely, (given the size of north america – almost 24/7, complete a project task/activity and then post back to a named directory for use by the command group?
If there is a volunteer GIS professional group already formed, please let us know – thanks -
If you all don’t have the stones to keep the articles you put up even after being pressured to take them down, how can you be credible?
http://thegisinstitute.org/blog/deepwater-horizon/deepwater-gis-data-concerns/
Bring it back.
hey Drew, what happened to your open letter to BP?
Not downloadable data, but…
http://www.geoplatform.gov/
I should point out: clearly, BP does not have all GIS data.
My husband (a fisheries biologist and ecologist) and I (former bio. sci. tech. for NMFS and ecologist)came down to the coast. We were struck by the almost complete absence of shorebirds and pelicans from the Tyndall end of Mexico Beach until the seemingly protected salt-marshes of Apalachicola where they appeared to be congregated in exile. We stopped roadside in Port St. Joe and looked at the shore. We found several small tarballs and an obsidian-like substance that was oddly sticky when rubbed (we are currently trying to determine what it actually is). The birds apparently had the good sense to evacuate Mexico Beach, yet humans were still frolicking on the shore and in the surf only yards away (on the unprotected side as if it would really matter) from countless miles of improperly deployed boom. Does no one else see anything wrong with that picture?
hi where could i find GIS training course in the philippines, can somebody help me if you know where i could enroll at please email me at my yahoo account or facebook. itscomplicatedjosh@yahoo.com
thank you i hope you help me out. more power
For information about response efforts, how
to help, or available assistance, I encourage you to visit
http://www.WhiteHouse.gov/deepwater-bp-oil-spill,
http://www.doi.gov/deepwaterhorizon, or http://www.epa.gov/bpspill/.
Small businesses may also find resources by visiting
http://www.sba.gov or calling 1-(800)-659-2955.