Katrina Spurs GIS-Based Preparedness for LSU

October 22, 2007 By: JoAnne Castagna

We've just passed the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the sixth-strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded — and the third-strongest hurricane on record that made landfall in the United States. To date, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) continues to deploy thousands of personnel to the Gulf Coast to assist the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other government and volunteer organizations to help get the battered region back on its feet. One of the ways the Corps is doing this is through GIS support.

Stephen McDevitt, a GIS expert with USACE's New York District, is one of four national action officers responsible for deploying and managing GIS teams throughout the Gulf region.

"The GIS takes data from various sources," said McDevitt, "such as aerial photographs, drawings, and electronic geographic data, and combines these layers of information in various ways as overlays to perform spatial analysis and produce an electronic map which depicts the results of that analysis."

This map of the LSU campus illustrates the university's vulnerable position, adjacent to the Mississippi River. This site makes storm preparedness especially important for the school. Image courtesy of Roger W. Porzig, Jacksonville District, USACE.

One of the ways USACE is using GIS is to make Louisiana State University (LSU) a disaster-resistant school. Even though the university wasn't damaged by Katrina, the campus is still vulnerable to future hurricanes.

The university is located in the southern part of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, bordered on the west by the Mississippi River. Louisiana is a coastal state that faces threats from hurricanes and tropical storms year-round, and especially during hurricane season.

Compiling Campus Data

USACE has been working with the university since last year to map the entire school into a GIS. This is being done so that when a hurricane hits, the faculty can electronically access maps to guide them through the crisis. This information could save the lives of thousands of students, faculty, and staff members.

"The main function of the GIS-based maps is to save lives by reducing the amount of time it takes for emergency personnel to assess a given situation," said Keith Koralewski, a hydraulic engineer with USACE, Buffalo District, who was deployed to Louisiana three times to provide GIS services for various operations. "LSU wanted to get their entire 2,000-acre campus into GIS, including all of their buildings, parking lots, sidewalks, and roads," Koralewski continued.

USACE linked building information into the school's safety database, including building names, number of rooms, classroom numbers, room layout, square footage, and professors' names and phone numbers.

"So if an emergency occurs in a particular building, they could pull up the GIS map, click on the building and see where the emergency exits and fire extinguishers are and be able to contact professors or other personnel who are normally in that area of the campus. If a certain area of the building is damaged this information can provide them with an idea of who may be trapped," said Koralewski.

"If there is a fire in a lab, we will be able to click into that room in the lab and see what chemicals we have presently in the lab, which is information we can provide to the fire department," said Joe Thompson, an officer in the LSU Police Department who has GIS experience and works with the school's information systems and emergency response systems. "Having an active campus so when you click on a building you get the data behind it — this is what GIS is all about," he asserted.