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Abstract

Local communities need disaster information, such as alerting of oncoming tsunamis or warning of out of control forest fires which are approaching urban areas. The Global Disaster Information Network may be able to help local communities by coordinating disaster information from a variety of sources and making it available to those communities which might be affected. Also, local communities can provide detailed information as to their damage after a disaster in order to make the shipment of humanitarian relief supplies more timely and effective. Some of the organizations which are involved in this initiative and their activities will be reviewed. In particular, organizational and procedural improvements in management of disasters and disaster information in California will be examined to determine whether or not some of these approaches might be appropriate to the development of the Global Disaster Information Network.

The Global Disaster Information Network has a tremendous potential for improving the capabilities of local communities to cope with disasters. GDIN should promote more effective collaboration among the providers, disseminators, and users of disaster information by complementing existing networks for sharing disaster information such as ReliefWeb. Some developments in management of disaster information by the State of California may be pertinent to the evolution of the GDIN concept.

The Loma Prieta; earthquake at 5:04 p.m. on October 17, 1989 near Santa Cruz, California resulted in 63 people killed, 3,757 injured, 1,018 homes destroyed, 23,408 homes damaged, and 3,530 businesses damaged.. There was extensive damage to the business districts, homes, and hospitals in the city of Santa Cruz, and in nearby Watsonville, the other city in Santa Cruz County. It is curious therefore that TV and radio broadcast stations concentrated their attention on damage in the San Francisco and Oakland area 80 miles north. The collapse of one span of the San Francisco-Oakland bridge, the collapse of a mile of the upper deck of a major expressway in Oakland which crushed 42 automobiles, and a large spectacular fire in San which burned blocks of expensive houses and apartments on the waterfront monopolized the news broadcasts.

The media barely noticed for almost 24 hours that earthquake damage to roads and bridges had isolated the city of Santa Cruz near the epi-center where many homes were damaged. Fortunately, pre-disaster local mutual aid agreements resulted in fire engines rushing to Watsonville to help even though the telephone communication systems had been damaged. There were 17 fires almost simultaneously in Watsonville after the earthquake. One of the important lessons learned from this disaster was how vulnerable highways, commercial electricity, gas pipelines and telephone systems are in California. Another lesson learned was that important information about earthquake damage in this disaster did not get promptly to the Governor's Office of Emergency Services in the State capital, Sacramento, 200 miles away.

The State of California therefore decided to invest $9 million in a satellite communications system for the Governor's Office of Emergency Services so that disaster information could be exchanged reliably in future earthquakes even though the commercial telephone system might be heavily damaged. There are 58 counties in California, so 58 satellite uplink/downlink stations were purchased, plus 4 trailer-mounted mobile stations, plus stations for the Governor's Office and 3 regional emergency operations centers. This satellite communications system is called OASIS - Operational Area Satellite Information System. Each county with its cities and special districts is now designated as an "operational area" for disaster purposes. Each operational area is responsible for coordination of disaster planning, response, and mutual aid within its area, and for communicating with other operational areas and with the Governor's Office and regional centers. The satellite permits each operational area to talk and send data to any or all of the other 57 operational areas, to the three regional emergency operations center, and to the Governor's State Operations Center. This system is exclusively for disaster-related information.

The State next developed standardized formats for messages: a) for reporting information about disasters; b) for requesting mutual aid; c) for reporting status of operations and resources; and d) for providing information for after-action reports. This California information system is called the "Response Information Management System" (RIMS). The information can be distributed using the OASIS satellite communication system or using other communication systems if they are operable after the disaster. RIMS uses off the shelf commercial software, Lotus Notes. Information about RIMS can be found on the State of California's OES web site which has details about all of the formats for the various disaster information reports.

The formats for distributing disaster information have been developed to follow a logical time sequence. After an event occurs, such as an earthquake, the local community prepares a basic incident report to tell all the appropriate authorities that something has happened. This is called the "Event/Incident Report". "Situation Reports" are subsequently distributed to provide updated information on the incident. "Mission Request/Tasking" messages asking for mutual aid are next sent if the disaster is so large that the resources of the local community are insufficient. The responding agency indicates whether or not it can provide the requested resources.

"Status Reports" for the Standardized Emergency Management System (SEMS) Reports Databases are prepared and distributed so that everyone will know what has happened, what is happening, and what is planned to happen in a variety of functions such as:

Mass Care and Shelter;

Fire and Rescue;

Law Enforcement;

Hazardous Materials;

Medical/Health;

Movements

Initial Damage Estimates

The use of standardized formats by the Lotus Notes software makes it possible for all relevant organizations to put their information into the RIMS system and update it so that everyone can receive the information simultaneously. The requests for mutual aid are directed to coordinating authorities, and the information as to whether or not the aid can be provided is available to all, since some other organization might be able to provide assistance.

The OASIS satellite communications system and the formatted emergency information of RIMS are part of California's new Standardized Emergency Management System (SEMS). This new statewide emergency management system was developed as a direct result of a fire in California in 1991. The disastrous "East Bay Hills" fire in Oakland and Berkeley in October 1991 resulted in 25 deaths and 150 injured. There were 3,354 houses and 456 apartments destroyed in spite of the efforts of more than 300 mutual aid fire engines brought to the disaster. This was the worst urban fire in the history of the United States with estimated cost of $1.5 billion.

There were a number of factors which were pertinent to this major disaster according to the official lessons-learned" report prepared by the East Bay Hills Fire Operations Review Group. The weather made fire fighting almost impossible with temperature of 92 degrees Fahrenheit, relative humidity of 16 percent, and winds of 30 knots gusting to 50 knots. The fire ignited 790 homes in first hour. It was difficult for the police to evacuate people from their homes as the fire spread because the streets were narrow and clogged with burned-out hulks of more than a thousand automobiles. The terrain was hilly with lots of trees. Many houses had wood shingle or wood shake roofs which caught fire easily.

However there were also important organizational problems. The Oakland Fire Department did not use the Incident Command System and had few formal mutual aid agreements. The Fire Department moved its field command post to three different locations as the fire spread, which made communications difficult with the Oakland Police Department which had established its command post in two different locations. The Governor of California arrived and it was difficult for him to find out who was in charge and what was going on.

Furthermore, the Oakland Fire Department had a different size fire hydrant from all other California cities so that the 300 mutual aid engines arriving from other cities needed to use adapters which were in short supply. The Oakland Fire Department's budget had been cut so much in the preceding ten years that about 40 % of the firefighting personnel had retired without replacement. There had not been enough money in the budget for training in fighting wildland fires. Because of the small budget for modernization, the fire engines had antiquated four-channel radios for communication instead of modern sixteen-channel radios. This made it difficult to communicate with the 300 mutual aid fire engines which had arrived to try to help.

State Senator Petris, whose home in Oakland had been burned, prepared the draft of Senate Bill 1841 which was quickly approved by the state legislature and signed by the Governor. This law is found in Section 8607 of the Government Code. The intent of the law was to improve the coordination of state and local emergency response in California. The new "Standardized Emergency Management System" (SEMS) became effective December 1, 1996.

The new Standardized Emergency Management System was based on improvements to existing systems and some new concepts. The five basic components are: 1) Incident Command System (ICS) - the Incident Command System as developed by fire departments in Southern California in the 1970s will be used at the field level by all responders; 2) Multi-Agency Coordination - multi-agency coordination is the coordination among different agencies within a jurisdiction, such as Fire and Law Enforcement. Inter-agency coordination takes place between different levels, such as city police, county deputy sheriffs, State police and California Highway Patrol officers; 3) Master Mutual Aid agreement - State, counties and cities originally signed a master mutual aid agreement in 1950. This has been further developed to now cover fire, law enforcement, coroner, emergency medical and search & rescue systems; 4) Operational Area - an operational area consists of a county and all political subdivisions within that county's area; and 5) Operational Area Satellite Information System (OASIS) - a satellite communications system with a high frequency radio backup installed at each of the 58 counties, the regions and the State.

The collection of formatted message reports designed to be transmitted over this satellite system is called the Response Information Management System. Some of these aspects of standardization of disaster information management in California may be of interest to the developers of the Global Disaster Information Network. There would appear to be numerous advantages to using standardized terminology and standardized formats to reduce the possibilities of is understandings particularly when a truly global system is being designed.

There have been problems after many disasters for outside organizations to provide appropriate humanitarian assistance to local communities. After a hurricane, for example, there may be many damaged houses. There may be a shortage of sheets of plywood and roofing material to make the houses temporarily habitable and keep the rain out. The community should have access to a disaster information network where these needs can be promulgated to appropriate organizations which may be able to provide the humanitarian assistance requested. The State and Local Emergency Management Data Users Group (SALEMDUG) developed a "National Donations Information System" some years ago. The goal of this disaster information system was to allow the communities affected by a disaster to specify in detail what sort of assistance they would like to receive, where they needed it and when. It also contained information from the providers of the equipment or personnel to the recipients as to what was being provided, where it would arrive and when so that the recipients could know that their request was being filled and when it would arrive. There had been a number of unfortunate examples after Hurricane Andrew in Florida of donations which had been sent spontaneously from organizations in northern states which arrived and caused problems rather than solving problems. The specific things or equipment which arrived had not been requested and were either inappropriate, delivered to the wrong location, or were too late. These well-intended efforts had the unfortunate effect of causing all sorts of problems for the receiving organizations. A disaster information network should address this issue.

The Pacific Disaster Center is a Federal information processing center located in Hawaii which is being developed as an organizational and technological model for global, national and local initiatives in disaster management. Actually, the Pacific Disaster Center serves as a nodal model for the Global Disaster Information Network. Federal participants in this development program have included the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Geological Survey, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Reconnaissance Office, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Pacific Disaster Center uses data from a variety of sources to produce more than 70 different products, such as tsunami travel time maps, tsunami evacuation maps, flood inundation maps, annotated imagery of damaged areas, maps of available shelters, etc.

The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho needs a near real-time fire monitoring system for the United States. The Center started in 1965 as the joint US Forest Service/Bureau of Land Management Fire Coordination Center. It is now an interagency organization supported by the Department of Agriculture's US Forest Service, the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Park Service, Office of Aircraft Services, and US Fish and Wildlife Service, NOAA's National Weather Service, and the National Association of State Foresters. The National Interagency Fire Center and the US Geological Survey are hosting a conference on GIS and remote sensing technologies, "Crossing the Millenium: Integrating Spatial Technologies and Ecological Principles for a New Age in Fire Management" on June 15-17, 1999 in Boise, Idaho.

The German Government, Ministry of Foreign Affairs is sponsoring a "Global Fire Monitoring Center" as a German contribution to the International Decade of Natural Hazard Reduction. This Center is at the Fire Ecology Research Group at Freiburg University, Freiburg. The Center publishes (on the Internet) the UN International Forest Fire News. The Global Fire Monitoring Center's website had a comment on one of the reasons why the center was established in June 1998. "However, it is evident that in many countries of the developing world the state of scientific and technical knowledge is either not known or readily accessible for developing adequate measures in fire policies and management. The fire and smoke episode in 1997-98 in South East Asia was a good example that existing fire information systems or fire management expertise was utilized to a limited extent only. These circumstances led to confusion at national and international decision-making levels and led to the delay of response by a series of national and international projects, some of them even missing the targets. This can be explained by the lack of an information system which is accessible globally." The Global Fire Monitoring Center has established contact at the working level with the Global Disaster Information Network. One of the goals of the Center's research program is to be able to provide real-time or near real-time information related to fire to GDIN and similar initiatives.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's National Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, Colorado is currently developing a near real-time multi-source active fire monitoring system. The National Geophysical Data Center gets global fire detection data from the US Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. This information should be available through the Goddard Space Flight Center. The Global Disaster Information Network should have the potential for providing local communities with timely alerting and warning information on disasters. For example, during the Oakland/Berkeley urban fire, the Oakland Fire Department did not really know where the fire was and where it might be spreading. The Fire Department did not have helicopters for observation, and was too disorganized to ask the U.S. Air Force or NASA for special photographic surveillance of the area of the fire by aircraft or satellite. We might some day have a similar problem in our City. Pacific Grove is adjacent to 5,000 acres of the Del Monte Forest, a golfing and expensive residential area known as "Pebble Beach". There was a 1000 acre fire in the Del Monte Forest in 1901. A fire there in 1987 destroyed 31 homes. This part of California has several State and National forests as well as federal wilderness areas within a few miles of our small cities. The "Marble Cone" fire in 1976 in nearby Los Padres National Forest burned more than 150,000 acres. Just prior to the rains of the 1998 "El Nino" year, we experienced five years of drought which raised concerns about the possibilities of extensive forest fires in these dry forests and wilderness areas.

A GDIN system might be able to help us by getting fire information from NASA assets at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Scientists at the Goddard Center and the University of Virginia have recently established a new global fire monitoring Web site which incorporates satellite information from the United States and international partners. NASA's coordination of these various capabilities for detection and monitoring of fires in California could be of tremendous value to our local communities and prevent a repeat here of the Oakland/ Berkeley urban fire disaster.

Local communities may need information on disasters such as wildland fires which might get out of control and advance on urban areas. The Global Disaster Information Network should have the potential of providing timely fire detection and monitoring information to the affected local cities. Local communities may be able to use the resources of the GDIN to make requests for specific humanitarian supplies after a disaster. Donation information systems should be able to be of value for providing accurate information back to the local communities as to what will be arriving, where, and when.

Governor's Office of Emergency Services. http://www.oes.ca.gov

See "The Big Book of RIMS (RIMS User Manual)" under "RIMS Newsletter"

State and Local Emergency Management Data Users Group (SALEMDUG)

http://www.geocities.com/area51/rampart/4818/index.htm

Pacific Disaster Center. http://www.pdc.org

National Interagency Fire Center. http://www.nifc.gov

Global Fire Monitoring Center, c/o Freiburg University

http://www.ruf.uni-freiburg.de/fireglobe/intro/intro.html

Global Fire Detection. National Geophysical Data Center/Defense Meteorological

Satellite Program http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/dmsp/

Fire Monitoring by Satellite. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

http://modarch.gsfc.nasa.gov/fire_atlas/fires.html

Global Fire Monitoring - Selected Bibliography of Satellite Monitoring of Fires

http://modarch.gsfc.nasa.gov/fire_atlas/bibliography.html