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Building a Replicable Flood Forecast Mitigation Support System to Simplify Emergency Decision-Making

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2011, Master of Arts, University of Toledo, Geography.

When faced with an incident, emergency or hazard event, Emergency Management Practitioners must work collaboratively to secure the safety and security of the citizens within their jurisdiction. Mitigation, response, and recovery efforts for emergency management decision makers are a complex and difficult challenge when a natural disaster, civilian unrest or man-made event occurs. Decision makers need a geographic vision during emergencies in order to understand situational awareness of the area of operations. These decision makers require geographic intelligence to support a common operating picture which delivers accurate real-time data and communication across agencies. No two emergency events are alike and each requires different problem solving techniques. Each supporting decision maker has specific responsibilities and requires a “Cliffs Notes” version of the available data. Data overload can easily overwhelm a decision maker.

During the summer of 2008, Central Indiana received up to 20 inches of precipitation on saturated soil in a short period of time. One of the responsibilities of the National Guard is to respond to these emergency events; it is considered Defense Support to Civil Authorities (DSCA). In order to provide a proactive approach for the emergency at hand, a predictive analysis was needed to identify where and how much precipitation would accumulate for the area of interest. The scientific community provided a variety of precipitation data which supported this event; however, it could not be viewed seamlessly within the Indiana National Guard’s internal common operating picture (COP). Emergency Management Practitioners need to be equipped with accurate geographic data in order to orchestrate a mission’s success. When an emergency event is imminent, decision makers need immediate results to provide answers for the required tasks at hand. There is no time to plan for a scenario when the scenario is occurring.

Emergency managers are constantly relied upon to make decisions that will preserve and protect our communities during a flood event. This study will discuss how a geographic vision can reduce communication complications between scientists, geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysts and emergency management practitioners by delivering data in the form of a digital map. This project will provide an introduction into data and software solutions derived by NOAA scientists, a replicable modeling process for flood events, and simple-to-follow tutorials required to support emergency operations. And finally, this thesis shows the results of presenting these data for emergency management practitioners’ analysis in a viewer friendly geographic COP.

David Nemeth, PhD (Committee Chair)
Bhuiyan Alam, PhD (Committee Member)
Kevin Czajkowski, PhD (Committee Member)
140 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • McCullough, C. M. (2011). Building a Replicable Flood Forecast Mitigation Support System to Simplify Emergency Decision-Making [Master's thesis, University of Toledo]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1301756439

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • McCullough, Christina. Building a Replicable Flood Forecast Mitigation Support System to Simplify Emergency Decision-Making. 2011. University of Toledo, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1301756439.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • McCullough, Christina. "Building a Replicable Flood Forecast Mitigation Support System to Simplify Emergency Decision-Making." Master's thesis, University of Toledo, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1301756439

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)