Top Quotes: “Mapping the Nation: GIS — The Intelligent Nervous System for Government”

Canals and Ports

“With the 2016 Panama Canal expansion, the cargo capacity of ships traveling through the important channel nearly tripled. Along with it came an increase in each ship’s draft — the distance between water line and keel that marks the necessary water depth for safe travel. These ‘New Panamax’ ships have a fully loaded draft of nearly 50 feet, placing new constraints on navigation that favor the nation’s deep water ports.

In the deepwater port of Texas City in Galveston Bay, recent storm-related sediment buildup (shoaling) reduced the shipping restriction from the typical 45-foot draft to just 41 feet. This 4-foot difference had an economic difference to both the port and the industries that rely upon it. The lower draft meant that companies needed to either use smaller ships to ferry cargo onto the Gulf of Mexico for loading onto bigger ships or divert their ships to different ports.

The key Brazilian port of Santos experienced similar storm-related restrictions. The port estimated that every day a vessel isn’t operating, ship owners lose $10k-$75k depending on the size and type of ship. One day of restrictions in Santos collectively costs ship owners $1 million, and this figure doesn’t factor the cost to the port and the overall economic impact to the country’s economy.

Without dredging, many ports would become impassable.

The Corps performs regular maintenance, akin to the paving of roads, in 400 ports and harbors and along 13,000 miles of deep-draft coastal channels and 12,000 miles of shallow-draft inland and intracoastal waterways. Spikes of storm debris add to the Corps workload, resulting in 250 million cubic yards of material dredged from the nation’s waterways yearly.

The Corps conducts regular hydrographic surveys across 22 coastal and 16 inland districts to assess channel safety and prioritize dredging needs. Taking eHydro to enterprise scale shares a common toolset to catalog, organize, and share surveys.

‘The Corps is a decentralized org with districts managing their own programs in their own geographic areas of responsibility,’ said the assistant director for civil works research of the US Army Corps of Engineers. ‘This structure proves efficient for project management, but it poses challenges for pulling together enterprise data.’

eHydro comprises an app and scripts to easily and almost automatically feed the data from each survey into a Corps-wide system.”

“In 2017, the Port of LA increased the draft of the port from 65 to 66 feet. Each additional foot means that larger ships can enter, and each ship can carry more goods. Each foot of depth translates into considerably more cargo and value. The National Ocean Service puts this added capacity into perspective. With a foot more draft, a cargo ship can carry the following:

• 684 more tractors, worth more than $45 million
• 379k more laptops, worth more than $262 million
• 9 million more bushels of wheat, worth more than $720k
• 62k more 55-inch TVs, worth approximately $26 million

The added capacity means fewer individual trips with less fuel consumed, which translates into dollars saved and greenhouse gas emissions avoided.”

Transportation

“Predictive analysis might model how traffic patterns would change if an overpass was added, illuminate road construction that could reduce accidents, or calculate how many schools might be needed if a residential area expanded at a certain rate.”

“Residents aren’t the only ones using Kuwait Finder. Local startups are using it for a quick-reference snapshot of the competition. An entrepreneur planning to open a specialty bakery might type in the tag ‘bakery’ to see the locations of all existing bakeries in Kuwait City. They can then identify gaps in the market and choose the best location for a new shop.”

City Government

“We always say that a good map answers a specific question, but a great map inspires three more. Questioning the map is the key to discovery, and it happens so quickly and interactively these days. Someone can ask to see data in a new way or to adjust a key indicator and we can all see how the map reacts when anchored around a new goal.”

“A map can reveal patterns and point to areas in need of attention. However, turning a simple map into an intelligent map requires asking the map carefully considered questions.

For example, when NYC officials unveiled an open data portal, they encouraged citizens to start creating maps. Many citizen-made maps looked at rat reports compared to restaurant locations.

Rats naturally occur near bigger populations. Normalizing for population densities helped the city reveal restaurant clusters that were outliers. By investigating additional data, they found that the biggest cause of more rats in the outliers was poor trash removal policies, leading to actionable info.”

“In Florida, interactive maps provide effective communication with the public. 9 Florida counties created ballot initiatives to add a penny-on-the-dollar sales tax to be spent on capital improvements. Officials at Leon County, home to Tallahassee, made a story map of all proposed projects to show what could be built where with the added tax income.

The initiative passed in Leon County with a 5:1 ratio while in the other counties it failed by a 1:5 ratio. The next year the other counties communicated the tax the same way, through an interactive map that related proposed projects to places people know, and the taxes passed.

Communities are quickly realizing they can use apps — such as story maps, open data sites, and location-based surveys — to create connections and improve our understanding of them.”

Disaster Prevention

“Location-based tech underpins the org’s flood-warming capability. During the recent floods [in South Asia], ICIMOD used its tech to provide maps, data, and expert recommendations. It also issued real-time alerts through an early-warning system operating in 2 areas prone to flashflooding — Assam, India, and Koshi, Nepal. Community observers use a network of transmitters to alert downstream communities when the waters rise.

Many of the villages that received alerts had a 7-hour lead time before the flood hit. That allowed residents to get out of harm’s way with their livestock and other vital items, giving them enough resilience to bounce back from a devastating storm.

‘For the last flood in 2017, we quickly processed satellite data to identify inundation areas in N. Bangladesh, India, and S. Nepal,’ said Sudip Pradhan, an ICIMOD program coordinator.”

“In the past, disaster management focused on response and relief. As location tech evolves, it makes more types of analysis possible — analysis that mitigates and reduces risk. Now ICIMOD is working to provide people with real-time warnings and disaster preparedness planning.

The org applies location intelligence software and professional support from ESRI to produce large-scale maps that integrate data on natural resources, lifestyle, and economic factors. These maps show details such as precise watershed boundaries for each Himalayan village, so locals can avoid building houses in high-risk areas.”

Aid and Defense

“In mid-2017, the Lebanese army conducted an exchange with Syria to remove the Islamic State and Al Qaeda-affiliated militants who were secluded in the mountains inside Lebanon’s NE border with Syria. Lebanese Red Cross staff used satellite imagery and a GIS to plan points of recovery — places where wounded fighters could be safely loaded into ambulances — and to identify escape routes should the delicate removal of this foreign force cause renewed fighting.

‘I was responsible for GIS, and it was absolutely critical to make my maps right, because any mistake could create conflict,’ said Chahine Hamze, ICT manager at the Lebanese Red Cross. ‘It was terrifying.’

LRC volunteers transferred wounded fighters to Syrian Red Crescent ambulances across the border and headed back for more. The org helped ensure the safety of ambulance drivers by connecting GIS to GPS satellite receivers in each ambulance so they could precisely monitor the progress of each ambulance and the overall operation. The transport of nearly 8k armed fighters took 3 trips in a convoy of 120 buses and 40 ambulances, and the map left clarity to a complicated mission.

LRC workers have experience with critical mapping. They also use GIS maps to keep track of minefields and unexploded ordinance in the country.

‘We use GIS to map the exact area of mines to empower the community to know where and how to get around it,’ said Hamze. ‘The coordinates must be exact.’”

“With its mission to promote peace and alleviate human pain without discrimination to nationality, political affiliation, or social class, LRC has become a societal glue in an unstable region.

LRC provides the only national ambulance and first aid service in the country. It also works to connect different factions, focusing on social cohesion and integration, with a paid staff of fewer than 400 people and 12,000 volunteers.

‘After the 33-day war in 2006, LRC decided to set a clear vision to improve our capacity and maintain our abilities,’ said Kassem Chaalan, disaster risk reduction program manager at LRC. ‘Yes, we’re financially poor, but we’re rich regarding our experience, knowledge, and motivation.’

The people of Lebanon endure ongoing conflict. A long civil war began in 1975 and lasted until 1990. A war broke the country into sectarian cantons. In 2011, the neighboring war in Syria spilled into Lebanon and caused the worst instability since the civil war.

‘When you live in a country with a lot of crises it requires fast decisions, and you learn faster than other countries that don’t experience this, Hamze said. ‘In my life, I’ve passed through 4 wars.’

Through wars and conflicts, LRC workers maintain a peaceful presence, administering aid to people in need.”

“To better monitor and manage its operations, LRC staff created a number of different departments, including ambulance, emergency med, disaster management, a blood bank, and youth outreach. They also began decentralizing operations, creating 40 stations where staff and volunteers operate, performing more than 1.2 million acts of humanitarian assistance per year.

The number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon recently passed 1.5 million, adding to 500k Palestinian refugees. This means there are an overwhelming number of vulnerable people in the country, with 5 million Lebanese and 2 million refugees.

To meet the growing demand for service, LRC has opened several blood transfusion centers, with plans for 13 locations. It uses GIS to gauge the need for blood and to record the location of donors.

‘If we have a shortage of A+ blood type, we know where to do a blood drive,’ Chahine said.

Rather than a top-down approach, the LRC works to build capacity in each community.

‘We continue empowering communities by creating local emergency response teams,’ Chalaan said. ‘We’re working to link them to our dispatch center and emergency hotline, to improve response times and send the closest team to each call.’”

Insect Spraying

“An early GIS project looked into the effect of aerial pyrethrin pesticide spraying on exposed human populations in Sacramento in 2005. Vector control leadership knew that the treatment was effective against mosquitoes, but it was important to ensure that populations didn’t suffer harm from pesticide exposure.

Maps oriented and focused that study in a way that raw spreadsheets couldn’t. For example, the flight paths and spraying swaths from planes that spread the treatment were digitally captured and used to develop precise exposure models. Levels of exposure were compared to the addresses of people who visited ERs for any potential complaint to a pesticide exposure. In the end, we found that the aerial application of pyrethrin pesticides, using the ultra-low volume method of spraying, wasn’t associated with any increase in ER visits.

I believe that public health pesticide use, when applied to the right areas at the right times, is critical to preventing serious illness from mosquito-borne illnesses. Using GIS to make those decisions, while also continually monitoring for any potential adverse effects provides people with the dual benefit of reduced risk and safe practices.”

Geopolitics

“What Kozok and his colleagues noticed in 2014 was a clandestine opening salvo from Russia. They observed that Russia was installing what looked like an undersea cable across the Strait of Kerch, a narrow waterway between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. As they monitored progress on the 46km cable, it became apparent that its end point was the peninsula of Crimea.

The cable’s existence strongly suggested Russia was making a move to connect Ukraine’s critical infrastructure with Russia’s. In particular, it looked like Russia’s cable would carry high-speed internal communications that could bypass Ukrainian service providers.

Kozok’s team members bolstered that inference through the sophisticated use of GIS. They could examine the cable’s construction in the context of location on a map that showed the world’s undersea cables and the nodes that connect the internet. From this, the team could deduce that Russia was trying to control all online communications. In the annals of warfare, it was a defining moment.

‘It was the first time a country had organized a military attack while also being very smart about planning for connectivity using a sea cable,’ Kozok explained. ‘Someone had to drive to Crimea as a tourist [before the invasion] and figure out the cable’s entry point. They had to make those plans without actually controlling the country.’

Russia continued to employ hybrid war techniques in Ukraine. Russian hackers launched a cyber attack against Ukraine’s power grid in 2015, cutting off electricity to 250k people. Almost exactly a year later, the hackers caused another blackout.

It’s now abundantly clear that cyber attacks present a danger to more than computer systems.”