2017 ESIP Winter Meeting: Disaster Cluster Sessions

Notes from 2017 Winter Meeting Disaster Sessions

Near Real Time Data for the Disasters Response User Community
2pm Disaster Cluster Session (Karen leading - Dave Jones remote)

Presentation & Discussion with David Green/NASA Applied Science for Disasters
Outcomes of NASA applied science efforts and 2016 workshop on low latency data needs

Addressing need for a timeline of disaster response efforts
Recent workshop on low latency datasets for time-sensitive applications (104 participants)

definitions of near realtime (low latency)
- 0-1 hours (realtime)
- < 3 hours (near realtime)
- 3-24 hrs -
NASA ESD endeavors to provide low latency data when small cost
NASA ESD mission to provide non-real-time data may outweigh near-real-time

NASA Mission support for NRT is secondary and considered as needed
Created an inventory of NRT - lots of datasets. How to identify/search/discover, and usable
Earthdata.nasa.gov - useful for NRT if you know how to use the site, but not so much for others
Recommendations for discoverability were prepared
Establishing a Latency Working Group

focus on use cases - how to address response “workflows”
need for “hazard” datasets (maybe special processing for low-latency datasets)

Questions/Comments

Phil Beilin in CA clearinghouse - how to get involved with latency project?
GSFC (name?) - has similar ideas to help identify relevant datasets for types of event

David looking at how the DAACs can do a better job of providing disaster relevant data

Gary Foley EPA - working with anyone from EPA? - some on ecological hazards - need more links

Presentation by Maggie Glasscoe/JPL - Earthquake activities
Cascadia Rising 2016 - Exercise Timelines and Product Deliveries

Pre-defined events so timeline is known in advance - for purpose of exercise, but not reacting in realtime
FEMA national level exercise - M 9.0 quake in Cascade Subduction Zone
Upcoming Haywired 2017 (USGS) exercise
Timeline of the event - showing when various data sets are available
MSEL - master scenario event list - chronological order of events and injects that drive exercise play

Questions/Comments

Phil Bellin - cross-agency participation
David Green has the cluster been involved with exercises - participants, but not the cluster per se

David - emphasizing participation in exercises - recommended and useful, NASA has a south American exercise planned for later this year

(GSFC) will there be a call for participation in the exercise(s)? Funding available for staging or participating in exercises
Gary Fowler - can we get the data to the onscene coordinators? Important aspect.

Presentation by Tom Moran/AHC (All Hazards Consortium)
Fleet Response Working Group activities with ESIP

Coordination of utility outage response - between 30-120 responding organizations
using Storm Center’s GeoCollaborate application to help organize and expose the data for response
Testbed Project - getting response data to the participants

realtime weather/forecasts
state emergency declarations - must be in trucks to cross state lines
electric sector fleet movement info
live data updates from businesses - worked through liabilities
Open/closed status of private sector businesses (fuel, food, hotels, etc)

Dave Jones comments

evolved from ESIP testbed activity
leading to definition and identification of “trusted” data sources
need better ways to discover the datasets
need to address timeline issues discussed earlier

Improving Resiliency with better data - Data Driven Decision Making (3DM) - workshops

screen sharing approaches - leader/follower approach
private sector owns the technology and allows government participation
exploring NASA (and other) agency data that will be useful - in response to use cases

David Green comments

pick subset of decisions to address - e.g. Haiti earthquake was too complex with too many variables to be a good use case to get good results
consider table-top exercises to learn valuable lessons

Data Driven Decision Making for the Disasters Response User Community
4pm Disaster Cluster Session (Karen leading - Dave Jones remote)

Presentation & Discussion with Erin Robinson/ESIP
ESIP perspectives on the Data Driven Decision Making (3DM) workshop in Oct. 2016

ESIP testbed effort linked up with All Hazards Consortium's Fleet Management Working Group
3DM workshop in Oct - ESIP presence, FEMA, Utility companies - private sector feeling
Hosted at Edison Electric Institute
stakeholders talking about their data needs
ways that ESIP can help bridge the data needs with data available from ESIP members and functions
Dave: in addition to identifying existing datasets is the chance to define new data products

Presentation by Tom Moran/AHC (All Hazards Consortium)
Fleet Response Working Group perspectives on the 3DM workshop

users/decision makers often don’t speak the same language as the data providers
used user “stories” to get across what the data gaps are - identified documentation gaps (declaration of emergency) - problem getting milk to impacted area; problem with turnpike access during an emergency
funding example; $30M for data initiative in 1 state - from 1 utility company
focus on data services - solving problems and use cases
FRWG will probably double in a year
Next workshop last week of Jan in Philadelphia

Questions/Comments

Brian Wee (Neptune) - how is the FRWG structured and participation; SIS (sensitive information sharing) agreement; needed to be private sector run only
Steve Young - potential role of crowd sourcing; WAZE example, not dependable but potentially useful; Haiti efforts led to useful information
David Green - yes, crowd sourcing potential (USGS “did you feel it”); need to get feedback to data producers on the benefit that the data provided - is there a way to get that type of feedback? What difference did it make?

Tom: same concern from private sector - potentially answered by workshops, webinars, etc.