PrintBesides researching previous disasters and geospatially-enabled emergency management technology, an excellent way to forecast what is needed in a future geospatial system is to develop scenarios. You've already had some experience with this in Lesson 3 where you explored potential disasters for Texas using the InaSAFE plugin for QGIS.
In a disaster management setting, scenarios are realistic stories that describe what would happen to people, infrastructure, and the natural environment with a given set of disaster conditions. Often, scenarios are developed as part of a hazard assessment process where they can be used to predict the possible effects on a place, given different types of hazard situations. Scenarios are also used to create training simulations to test preparedness measures and response plans. This latter purpose is particularly relevant for this class; we need to use scenarios to evaluate the extent to which our geospatial infrastructure and analytical capabilities will actually hold up during a disaster situation.
Note that in geospatial system design activities, scenarios can end up being quite formal in terms of their structure. For further reading on the essence of scenario-based design, check out this section from Geospatial System Analysis and Design: GEOG 583 – NOTE: you don’t have to read all of this! Just have a quick look.
Disaster Scenario Examples
A great way to understand scenarios is to read a few yourself. The US Department of Homeland Security and FEMA have prepared many different scenarios and training materials that you can review. Please click on the "Emergency Planning Exercises For Your Organization" link on Emergency Planning Exercises page to see some examples. In particular, I would like to explore a few of these exercises. Please pay particular attention to the roles that participants play, the rules to follow, the scenario itself, and the prompts used to keep things moving. What are participants expected to do and get out of this? Focus on these (but feel free to explore others):
Critical Power Failure
“Developed by the Office of External Affairs and the FEMA's National Exercise Division, this exercise is based on a combination of U.S. communities experiencing critical power failure during a severe weather event. Designed to help the private sector identify ways to prepare for, respond to, and recover from such a disaster.”
Hurricane
“Prepare to respond to and recover from a Category 5 hurricane. Based on the National Planning Scenario for a major hurricane, this exercise was developed by the Office of External Affairs together with FEMA's National Exercise Division to prepare the private sector for catastrophic damage caused by major flooding, tornado, and other natural disasters.”
Chemical Accident
“Based on the National Planning Scenario for a chlorine tank explosion, this exercise is designed to help the private sector improve Organizational Continuity, Preparedness, and Resiliency in the event of an emergency, to respond to, recover and restore operations.”
Tabletop Exercises
You’ll also note that scenarios often go hand-in-hand with Tabletop exercises. Tabletop exercises are simulated response activities. Usually, these are held in an extremely generic hotel ballroom with stakeholders of all types hunkered down on their laptops. An exercise begins with a scenario description, and then a moderator provides additional information during the response activities to throw things into further chaos and test the limits of what people are prepared for. Some of the FEMA materials include videos to simulate news reporting, although they need to be about forty times more hyperbolic to match the 24/7 news channel intensity these days.
The 2:06 minute video below provides an interesting example of a tabletop exercise conducted by the local government in Waco, Texas in 2017. Pretty low-tech, but you get the idea of what can be accomplished. More focused exercises can subsequently be run with specific stakeholders, e.g., geospatial teams.
Click here for a transcript of the Emergency Operations Hold Table Top Exercise video.
Emergency Operations Hold Table Top Exercise
PRESENTER: Are you prepared for a winter storm? I mean, a really big storm? Well, the Waco-McLennan County Office of Emergency Management, along with Baylor University, held what's known as a tabletop exercise, where city staff from multiple departments, along with other community partners, went through a disaster scenario where most of Texas and especially Waco was hit by a major winter storm that iced all the roads, knocked down power lines, interrupting electricity to a majority of the city, taking down with it all TV and radio stations, and many cell towers over the seven frigid days of the storm.
Now, what would you do? That's some of the things that these city staff members discussed and planned for such an event. A typical ice and severe cold weather event in Waco lasts only about one or two days. But after six or seven days of continued ice and storm, emergency generators run out of fuel, and fuel delivery trucks can't provide the needed resources.
These are the things your city's emergency management team worked with at this emergency preparedness exercise held at McLane Stadium on Wednesday, September the 5th. Coordinated by Frank Patterson and Daniel Scott at Waco's emergency management office and hosted by Baylor University, participants realized that we have good plans already for such an event. But when talking it through across the table, there were new ways to improve and be prepared for a bigger than big event.
DANIEL SCOTT: It's important to bring everybody together at a time, work through some different scenarios, so when something does happen, everybody has gone through the process that we would take in an actual emergency, and we all know each other. We all know what our job is going to be. We all stay in our own lanes. And when it comes down to it, we can get it done without second guessing each other. We've done it before in practice, so we can do it in real life right there on the fly.
PRESENTER: It's exercises like this that help Waco area emergency responders be ready and prepared for all kinds of events that impact the lives of our residents.