FEMA’s Hurricane Incident Journal – Madeline Jones (Geo4Dev 2018)

Madeline works as a Geophysical Data Scientist for New Light Technologies in Washington ,DC where she provides geospatial, remote sensing, modeling and analytical solutions where data science converges with natural hazards and disaster response.

Madeline’s talk is titled: FEMA’s Hurricane Incident Journal: A Web Application Supporting Event-Specific Decision Support
For emergency managers, government officials, and others who must respond to rapidly changing natural disasters, timely access to detailed information related to affected terrain, population and infrastructure is critical for planning, response and recovery operations. Accessing, analyzing and disseminating such disparate information in near real-time are critical decision support components. However, finding a way to handle a variety of informative yet complex datasets poses a challenge when preparing for and responding to disasters. Here, we discuss the implementation of a web-based data integration and decision support tool for hurricanes developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as a solution to some of these challenges.

The 2nd Annual Symposium on Geospatial Analysis for International Development (Geo4Dev) focused on geospatial research that addresses climate- and conflict-driven migration and humanitarian response. This includes observation and modeling of migration and human settlement patterns (in response to climate or conflict stressors), as well as the design and evaluation of interventions for humanitarian crises, mass migration, and community resilience.

Geo4Dev is a yearly event focused on the use of novel geospatial data and analytic techniques to address issues of poverty, sustainable development, urbanization, climate change, and economic growth in developing countries and beyond. This includes a particular emphasis on the use of emerging geo-tagged big data, including satellite, social media, and CDR datasets.