FEMA Geospatial Damage Assessments
In January of this year, the Coast Guard and FEMA started a joint project where Auxiliarists would assist FEMA in performing geospatial damage assessment. This is a process where the damage from storms and other disasters is recorded in a geographic information system (e.g. a computer map). That process is an essential step in allowing FEMA to issue a disaster declaration and allow federal dollars and assistance to flow.
Auxiliarists were trained on FEMA’s mapping system, and after passing a qualification exam, were assigned to a team that could be called up in the event of a disaster.
There are two basic forms of identifying and assessing the damage to structures. For some disasters, footage will be taken from an aircraft, and input into the mapping system. This allows a before and after top-down view of the area. Specific features are looked for, and if a structure meets that criteria, it is assigned a damage rating. In some disasters, this type of imaging is not available, and so called “open-source” imagery must be used. This is photos and videos of the area that were not specifically taken to assess damage and posted online. A common example would be news footage of the area. If a specific structure can be identified, and damage noted, that building can be given a damage rating in FEMA’s mapping system.
I went through this process earlier this year, and was recently called up for the flooding in Texas and New Mexico. In a team of 20-30 people, we were able to find open-source imagery and identify numerous damaged buildings in Ruidoso, New Mexico. After 2-3 days of work, there was sufficient number of damaged structures that a federal disaster declaration was declared for that area.