Group Scenario Exercise

Introduction

This week we will do something a little different for our writing assignment. I would like you to work in groups (see the Lesson 7 announcement for group assignments) to develop one of three different scenarios that focus on leverage points for the use of geospatial applications and technology. You will have the opportunity to imagine a realistic situation and propose different roles for geospatial approaches during the disaster. Each group will use Esri Story Maps to present the content and analysis you have developed. 

For this exercise, you will work in the following groups

Group 1 - TBD

Group 2 - TBD

Group 3 - TBD

Group 4 - TBD

You will be assigned one of three topics.

1. Develop a scenario about a cyber attack that impacts the power grid in the Southeast US. Split your scenario into five 6-hour long time periods, starting with the time period 6 hours prior to the attack.

2. Develop a scenario about a major indiustrial accident (e.g.,chemical spill but you can choose something else) in an industrial site within a major urban area. Split your scenario into five 6-hour long time periods, starting with the time period 6 hours prior to the accident.

Criteria

You will notice that I have not provided detailed specifics on certain aspects of each disaster, such as how fast the wildfires are spreading, or how effective the cyber-attack was at interrupting the power supply. I encourage you to fill in those gaps in your writing and to imagine plausible answers to those sorts of questions.

• For each time period, write two short paragraphs describing what would happen to people, infrastructure, and the natural environment considering the local geography.
• For each time period, identify at least one example of how GIS could be used to prepare, mitigate, respond to, or recover from a specific aspect of the disaster.
• Embed pictures, maps, or other graphics to help tell your story. If you have ideas for geospatial workflows, include them in graphical form.
• Your scenario should be compelling and realistic in a way that would make it easy for an organization to use it as a starting point for developing a disaster preparation plan.

I know group work can be challenging if everyone doesn't do their part. As part of the assessment you will be asked to provide confidential feedback to me about how things went with your team mates. If you are having problems during the week, please let me know as well. 

Instructions

For this group exercise, you will be organizing your content into an Esri Story Map. For those of you not familiar with Story Maps, they are a great way of presenting a narrative that includes a mix of text, maps, and other multimedia. They can be a powerful way of conveying a lot of complex material in a “guided tour” format. You can view many examples on the Story Maps homepage. The Story Map related to Hurricane Harvey is particularly nice and you saw one on the 2018 Camp Fire in Lesson 2. 

There are a number of ways to get started. You can collaboratively edit in your Story Map directly or you can create a “Storyboard” in a program like PowerPoint or Word and then migrate content. I recommend you develop a storyboard. This will help you organize your content and make sure you have what you need to make the story map. As mentioned in earlier lessons, you can manage your collaboration in the course OneDrive folder.

Here are some resources to get you started.

• ArcGIS Online
• How to make a story map
• What Kind of Story Do You Want to Tell?
• There are also many videos on the Esri site and YouTube for further advice and inspiration.

Before you get started, I recommend that you decide on a division of labor for this work. For example, one person might want to be responsible for developing the overall narrative in consultation with the group, another person might want to take on the analysis/mapping task and another may want to focus on migrating everything into the Story Map.

Collaborating

Since you are working in small groups, collaboration should be fairly straightforward, I suggest the following - 

• Get organized - Review the assignment requirements and decide on what you are going to do. Come up with a division of labour e.g., someone might collect content, someone might develop the maps and someone might assemble the Story Map. Make a plan and stick with it, and keep in mind you don't have a lot of time. 
• OneDrive and Office 365 Apps - Create a folder in OneDrive and share it with your group. Collect any images or other resources needed for your Story Map. Consider using PowerPoint to create a 'storyboard' to layout your content before moving it to ArcGIS Online.
• ArcGIS Online and Story Maps - Create a group and invite your classmates. You should be able to enable simultaneous editing of the StoryMap. Note that web maps / apps you create can be embedded in Story Maps along with a wide range of other content.  
• Ask for help - Get in touch with the instructor if you are having any problems. 

Grading Criteria

I'll assign grades by group. This project is worth 4% of your total course grade and will be graded out of 20 points using the following rubric.