ArcGIS Enhances Emergency Response at Fire and Emergency New Zealand
Background challenges
On 12 February 2023, New Zealand was battered by Cyclone Gabrielle, one of the southern hemisphere's most significant and costly weather events. The cyclone arrived two weeks following the Auckland Anniversary Weekend flooding, an event that brought catastrophic flooding leading to widespread damage to property, roads and infrastructure. The scale of damage from these extreme weather events was unprecedented with emergency response and recovery services challenged as never before.
As New Zealand's primary response agency, FENZ faced the task of efficiently managing incident data while ensuring compliance with privacy regulations.
Solution number one
By developing an Esri web-based geospatial solution, Hamish McEwen, FENZ Chief Data and Analytics Officer, and his team were able to provide detailed situational awareness to a number of relevant agencies across the public sector. To power this, FENZ unlocked its CAD data (Computer-Aided Dispatch), the system that captures information from emergency calls and incident data to share with Auckland Emergency Management.
The significance of this shift in approach cannot be overestimated. It demonstrates the importance of the thought leadership provided by FENZ around data sharing. It resulted in new and more effective ways of collaborating that will benefit greater numbers of people and properties in future emergency events.
ArcGIS' tools enabled a number of ways of displaying CAD data without revealing personal details, while still providing sufficient information about locations and clusters of events. This enabled emergency services to respond with greater effectiveness whilst protecting peoples' privacy.
'The response from Auckland Emergency Management to receiving this data was overwhelmingly positive,' says Hamish McEwen.
When Cyclone Gabrielle arrived, NEMA (National Emergency Management Agency) approached FENZ with a request to share its incident data more widely. NEMA wanted to find out where the emergency calls were coming from, who was being affected, and how.
FENZ began to accumulate data from various sources, including RDA (Rapid Damage Assessments) and WAA (Wide Area Assessments) from USAR. WAA information captures qualitative assessments of infrastructure items, such as bridges and roads which impact response. RDA information is captured as a first five-minute check of a property to assess damage as well as residents' wellbeing.
Solution two – development of a Common Operating Picture (COP)
From 13-20 February 2023 the FENZ team began to build a platform in ArcGIS for sharing emergency-related data. They created a COP that brought together multiple data points from a range of sources into an ArcGIS Online Web Application to be shared with relevant agencies, enabling more informed decision-making. By aggregating this complex information, FENZ made it easier for other agencies to maximise the benefits to their own crisis operations. '
The open access to the [ArcGIS] Hub for so many people, the ease of layering and all possible relevant information being in a single source was invaluable and the way forward to have operations for future endeavors.' NZ Police
This version of the FENZ COP was released in late February 2023. By the end of March 2023, 34 Government agencies, five commercial agencies, 215 individual accounts, and 30 different information and imagery datasets had been connected to share FENZ COP data via ArcGIS.
The speed and scale of the data sharing was unique. The ability to leverage relationships and the connected nature of New Zealand meant the COP came together relatively quickly.
Taking on board the lessons learned from responding to Cyclone Gabrielle, FENZ is working with a small group of agencies to build a permanent Common Operating Platform (COP), due to be completed during 2024, and thereafter, regularly updated. This new COP will include wide-area assessment tools for use by front-line teams in advance of future major events and will facilitate more effective engagement with incident management teams.
The new COP has been designed to be more intuitive for users, who can mainly self-learn to use it. It will be grouped into four key category layers related to particular user requirements: situational awareness, people and property, assets and infrastructure, and imagery.
Using ArcGIS Online apps, FENZ is transforming raw data into a more accessible form – more informative than mere dots on a map – making it easier for users to gain insights and make qualitative assessments. Different users will use different categories and types of data at various stages of an emergency event, depending on whether they are involved as initial responders and assessors or follow-up recovery teams.
Outcomes and benefits
The value of making this shared data more widely available not only in emergency situations but also to the New Zealand economy and public is incalculable.
'By sharing our emergency data we can really strengthen the resilience of our communities' says Hamish McEwen, FENZ. 'We can keep people safer by being able to respond in a more coordinated, effective way. The establishment of a Common Operating Picture prevents agency silos and inefficiencies, contributing to the greater good by saving lives and properties.'
- Using geospatial (ArcGIS) applications enabled FENZ to share data it had previously assumed was not permissible to share due to the difficulties of managing privacy whilst providing necessary insights.
- 100% of users surveyed by FENZ wanted, used, and could see the benefits of a permanent COP solution.
The FENZ COP demonstrates the power of ArcGIS in enabling:
- Cross-government collaboration.
- Organisations to operate collectively rather than individually. The result is an invaluable accumulation of data that will enable more effective emergency management in future extreme events.
- Organisations and agencies to take the FENZ shared data via its COP platform and build their own COP, or integrate data into their own COP.
'The COP will help people to better understand the context of an emergency event from the beginning,' says Hamish McEwen. 'FENZ will continue to share this data, as it's critical we're ready before the next disaster strikes. We need to continue to build on what we've achieved after life has returned to normal and there's no major emergency.'
Aims of the FENZ Common Operating Picture (COP)
- To keep people safe and protected by emergency management teams being able to respond in a more coordinated way.
- To improve access to trusted data and intelligence that supports operational strategic decision-making during extreme events and natural disasters.
- To strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters.
Lessons learned by FENZ
One of the lessons learned by FENZ was that providing new tools to people in the midst of a disaster is not ideal. How useful it would have been if that platform had been ready on 12 February when the cyclone hit. Every call received by FENZ during the cyclone and its immediate aftermath could have been automatically displayed on its shared digital mapping. People would have been prepared a week earlier with the right information to respond effectively. From now on, thanks to FENZ's groundbreaking COP, this will be the case.
'We're very proud to support FENZ and celebrate its collaborative approach, providing leadership in the emergency management sector through the development of a Common Operating Picture platform,' Graeme Henderson, Business Development Manager, ArcGIS Sales.
In recognition of its outstanding work with GIS technology, Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) has been selected to receive a Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Award at the 2024 Esri User Conference.