Lesson 6: Recovery
Lesson 6: Recovery sxr133Overview & Checklist
Overview & Checklist jls164
Overview
This week, we will focus on how geospatial approaches and technologies can support the final phase of emergency management - recovery. After response efforts have ended, recovery efforts can begin in earnest. GIS and related geospatial tools can be used to plan near-term infrastructure repairs and to identify candidate organizations and communities to receive long-term aid and assistance through grants and infrastructure projects. Recovery projects frequently involve close interaction with disaster victims who want to rebuild and return to 'life as usual." This poses challenges and opportunities for geospatial practitioners and those who consume information from geospatial analyses. We will discuss these topics and others throughout this lesson.
Recovery
The rebuilding or improvement of disaster-affected areas
- Debris Management
- Return essential services
- Food and water
- Temporary housing
- Economic assistance
- Insurance claims and rebuilding
- Business aid
What You Will Learn
By the successful completion of this lesson, you should be able to:
- explain and compare multiple ways in which geospatial analysis can be applied to disaster recovery efforts;
- identify strengths and weaknesses in current geospatial approaches to disaster recovery;
- evaluate, describe, and discuss trends and advances in cloud and mobile computing and how they are impacting geospatial systems for emergency management;
- develop a solid first draft of your term project.
What You Will Do
Lesson 6 is one week in length. To finish this lesson, you must complete the activities listed below.
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Please refer to the Course Calendar for specific due dates.
Questions?
If you have questions about the content or lesson activities, please post them to the General Questions and Discussion forum in Canvas. While you are there, feel free to post your own responses if you, too, are able to help a classmate. If your question is of a personal nature, please email me directly through Canvas.
Recovering from Disasters
Recovering from Disasters jls164Stages of Disaster Recovery
Recovery is a difficult process and involves the coordination of a range of actors with different levels of decision-making power and resources. This is illustrated by the US Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Disaster Recovery Framework (NDRF) which seeks to address and find a way to operate given this complexity:
The National Disaster Recovery Framework is a guide that enables effective recovery support to disaster-impacted States, Tribes, Territorial and local jurisdictions. It provides a flexible structure that enables disaster recovery managers to operate in a unified and collaborative manner. It also focuses on how best to restore, redevelop and revitalize the health, social, economic, natural and environmental fabric of the community and build a more resilient Nation.
The framework document includes some nice visualizations of disaster recovery as a process that plays out over time (and space!). Take a moment to consider this diagram and the listed examples of activities in the short, intermediate, and long term. Who are some of the actors responsible for undertaking these activities? Where do spatial data and analysis come in?
Stages of Disaster Recovery described in the FEMA National Disaster Recovery Framework (NDRF)
Stages of Disaster Recovery described in the FEMA
This image shows that Preparedness happens before the disaster. Once the disaster hits, short-term recovery commences, followed by intermediate and long-term recovery. This is not a strictly linear progression as one phase begins before the previous one's end. See the lists below for examples.
Preparedness (Pre-disaster Preparedness) is ongoing. Some examples include:
- Pre-disaster recovery planning
- Mitigation planning and implementation
- Community capacity and resilience building
- Conducting disaster preparedness exercises
- Partnership building
- Articulating protocols in disaster plans for services to meet the emotional and health care needs of adults and children
Short-Term Recovery (days after the disaster)
- Mass Care/Sheltering: Provide accessible interim housing solutions
- Debris: Clear primary transportation routes
- Business
- Establish temporary or interim infrastructure to support business re-openings
- Reestablish cash flow
- Emotional/Psychological: Identify adults and children who benefit from counseling or behavioral health services and begin treatment
- Public Health and Health Care: Provide emergency and temporary medical care and establish appropriate surveillance protocols
- Mitigation Activities: Assess and understand risks and vulnerabilities
Intermediate Recovery (weeks to months after the disaster)
- Housing: Provide accessible interim housing solutions
- Debris/Infrastructure
- Initiate debris removal
- Plan immediate infrastructure repair and restoration
- Business
- Support reestablishment of businesses where appropriate
- Support the establishment of business recovery one-stop centers.
- Emotional/Psychological: Engage support networks for ongoing care
- Public Health and Health Care: Ensure continuity of care through temporary facilities
- Mitigation Activities: Inform community members of opportunities to build back stronger
Long-Term Recovery (months to years after the disaster)
- Housing: Develop permanent housing solutions
- Infrastructure: Rebuild infrastructure to meet future community needs
- Business
- Implement economic revitalization strategies
- Facilitate funding to business rebuilding
- Emotional/Psychological: Follow-up for ongoing counseling, behavioral health, and case management services
- Public Health Care and Health Care: Reestablishment of disrupted health care facilities
- Mitigation Activities: Implement mitigation strategies
The next image, again from FEMA, seeks to illustrate how recovery efforts are related to one another but also play out differently in different contexts. For example, recovery in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria has, in many ways, been a slower process than what has happened over the last year in Texas and Florida. Resources can be stretched thin when so many events occur around the same time (Note that in addition to the hurricanes, there were also major wildfires in the Western USA occurring around the same time in 2017). Moreover, some places never fully recover as they are repeatedly subject to disaster events. We will explore the recovery process in the next section on Hurricane Sandy, and you will also consider a few case studies in later lessons on events in Nepal and Indonesia.
Black Summer in Australia
The 2019-20 Bushfire season was catastrophic for much of Australia and National Bushfire Recovery Agency was created to coordinate the recovery effort. Take some time to look at this site and think about the range of activities underway and who they are targeted for.
Recovery from Hurricane Sandy
Recovery from Hurricane Sandy jls164
As we have seen, the boundary between response and recovery is a fuzzy one as is that between recovery and mitigation. As we have talked about earlier, it is useful to think of the stages of emergency/crisis management as a circle with each stage blending into the next. The roles of geospatial approaches and technologies can be conceptualized as occupying (often overlapping) positions along this circle.
This overlap in functions was never more apparent than with the 2012 Sandy Hurricane disaster hitting the eastern seaboard. In the midst of efforts to rescue people stranded by floodwaters, politicians and others began discussing how or whether to rebuild--opening what will probably be a long dialogue about the potential to rebuild in a way that is more resistant to similar events in the future and comparing the economic and other costs of this option with suggestions to not rebuild at all or to relocate parts of the city. Similarly, while repairs and rescue efforts continued, work began in some parts of the city to start on recovery – with spatial tasks ranging from figuring out where displaced individuals were, to assessing damage in regions of the city to determine whose insurance claims of disaster relief requests to process first, to re-establishing utilities, fixing roads, and other efforts to establish the infrastructure required to carry out whatever recovery efforts were decided upon.
Background on What Happened During Hurricane Sandy: Optional, but recommended!
This video, Inside the Megastorm (54:38 minutes), produced by PBS NOVA does a nice job of describing the storm and why it was so damaging. It also helps illustrate the many ways that spatial data analysis was used to aid in the response and immediate recovery. Note how different groups used geospatial data and analysis e.g, first responders, search and rescue, utilities, transportation. I know this is a long video, but it is worth a look, especially if you are not very familiar with what happened.
To get a sense for just how complex and challenging recovery can be, have a look at this report from the Guardian, Hurricane Sandy, five years later: 'No one was ready for what happened after' and contrast it with some of the materials on the FEMA site, Sandy Five Years Later. Do you notice a difference in tone and emphasis of these two sources? Unfortunately, there are pretty much always winners and losers during recovery efforts.
Critical Perspectives on Recovery
Finally, here are two critical perspectives on recovery I’d like you to pay close attention to. This essay, A Tale of Two Recoveries: 5 Lessons from Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, is written by geographers Susan Cutter and Christophe Emrich of the Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute at the University of South Carolina. Susan Cutter is an influential scholar working in this space, and you are likely to come across her research center’s work (in fact, consider having a quick search in Google Scholar and/or visit the HVRI website). The second article, As Storms Keep Coming - FEMA Spends Billions in ‘Cycle’ of Damage and Repair, also focuses on some important and difficult issues around recovery, in particular, the back-and-forth between disasters and recovery effort. This echoes some of the messages in the Cutter article, and I’d like you to think about how the 5 Lessons relate to this analysis of FEMA spending. Although the article focuses on FEMA, the story is much the same for other countries trying to manage the complexity of recovery efforts, and we will see this later in the Sulawesi earthquake and tsunami case study.
As we've seen, disasters have a highly variable impact spatially and temporally. There are also strong spatial differences in social, economic, and environmental characteristics that shape both impact and recovery. The map below illustrates this issue by mapping housing damage against median income for part of Long Island in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. This is probably not too surprising given what you learned in Lesson 3 about hazards and social vulnerability. You can really see this play out during a big event like Sandy. This map comes from a piece in The Conversation, Storms hit poorer people harder, from Superstorm Sandy to Hurricane Maria, by Professor Chris Sellers at Stony Brook University.
For Further Consideration: Optional
The optional Business of Disaster video (54:47) continues to explore many of the themes around the complexities of disaster recovery. The video was produced by PBS FRONTLINE and NPR in 2017 and focuses specifically on the (ongoing) recovery from Hurricane Sandy.
Click here for a transcript of the Business of Disaster video as posted on the PBS/Frontline website.
Think About It
Think About It jls164
As you read the course materials and other resources this week, think about strategies that are needed to develop geospatial data and analysis as general capability through which governments and other organizations can address the full range of emergency management challenges. Consider, in particular, what strategies are needed to make the process of using GIS and related technologies to support each stage of emergency management seamless - so that it is practical for emergency management teams to move quickly from the planning to the recovery stage as an event happens and to move among response, recovery, and planning-mitigation tasks as needed.
Also consider one common constraint - quite often the provisioning given to GIS systems to support emergency management is focused on preparedness and response phases. It's a lot harder to convince people to invest in new systems to support long-term recovery efforts. As we continue to face many and nearly simultaneous disasters, investing in recovery this way may become more and more urgent.
Finally, much of what we have considered has focused on events impacting the USA in particular. Moving forward we will explore these issues in other places, including Nepal and Sulawesi, Indonesia. These are places with perhaps more limited resources and geospatial infrastructure and often involve the international community and organizations playing a much stronger role. So think critically about the role of geospatial analysis and what is essential versus what is in development and may roll out eventually. In terms of recovery, how does it play out in these different countries and who is leading recovery efforts?
Reading Assignment
Reading Assignment jls164The readings for this week focus on the final component of emergency management, recovery. You will read a chapter in your text and two papers that address different approaches for using spatial analysis to understand patterns of recovery after major disasters. They all touch on the challenges of using geospatial analysis to help communities and organizations cope with events having geographically distributed impacts. Such events can range from relatively localized chemical spills affecting a small drainage basin, through major events impacting hundreds of thousands of people and with substantial financial impacts (such as 9/11, the 2011 Japan Earthquake, or Hurricane Florence).
1. READ
Chapter 8 – Geographic Information Systems and Disaster Recovery from Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for Disaster Management
This chapter from your textbook provides another overview of how GIS is used in disaster recovery. Note how it contrasts how different types of events require different types of geospatial tools. It also provides some good descriptions of where GIS response could be improved and ways that a long-term recovery infrastructure could be promoted.
Think About
As you read this chapter, consider the following: How is the use of geospatial for recovery likely to differ for different kinds of events? What recovery-related geospatial issues does your text not cover that ended up being important in the years subsequent to a disaster like, say, Hurricane Sandy? When is recovery over?
2. READ
Schumann et al. 2020. Wildfire recovery as a “hot moment” for creating fire-adapted communities. Internaional Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 42:101354. (Available on next page in Canvas)
This paper pulls together many of the topics we have consdiered so far. The authors suggest that "the period following a destructive wildfire may provide a “hot moment” for community adaptation. Drawing from literature on natural hazard vulnerability, disaster recovery, and wildfire ecology, this paper proposes a linked social-ecological model of community recovery and adaptation after disaster".
Respond
Both the journal articles focus on very different ways of using spatial data and GIS analysis to explore longer-term recovery from different types of disasters. What advantages or disadvantages do you see in both approaches? Pick one or two to share with your classmates, and try to link your points to other ideas we have covered so far in the course.
Deliverable
- This week, you will be participating in a "live discussion" with some of your classmates and me! So, no written posts are required! The meeting will last one hour.
- We will focus on the journal articles, so come to the discussion with any points or questions you would like to raise.
- I will send out a Doodle poll so we can fined some times that will work for everyone. We will meet in small(ish) groups so everyone can participate.
- Note: You will also do a short writing assignment that will critique this article as well. This will give you a chance to reflect on what comes out of the live discussion.
Grading Criteria
This discussion will be graded out of 15 points - pretty easy this week! Just show up and share your thoughts.
Emerging Theme: Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chains
Emerging Theme: Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chains jls164This week’s emerging theme is focused on an age-old problem, how to get things from point A to point B. The importance of logistics and supply chains in emergency management cannot be overstated. It is a topic that intersects all phases of emergency management but is perhaps most important in the preparation stage. In this section, I’ll provide a bit of background, then you will look at a few videos, agency presentations, and short readings. We’ll end with a consideration of cutting-edge trends in the field that are having or have the potential for big impacts. Finally, you will take what you've learned into a discussion forum and bounce ideas off your classmates. I have also provided some links to optional reading if you want to learn more about this topic.
Background on Logistics and Supply Chains
We will begin with some quick background information about disaster and humanitarian logistics. The first video provides an overview description of what humanitarian logistics is all about. Then there are two videos that show what this looks like on the ground during some recent disasters. Finally, a news article explores what can go wrong if one part of the supply chain is disrupted - blue tarps!
Watch: The Logistics Cluster in 2:30 Minutes
[MUSIC PLAYING]
PRESENTER: When an emergency strikes, there are certain items vital for survival, such as food, water, shelter, and medicine, which need to reach the affected population fast. However, this is never as simple as A, B, C.
Despite the challenges, humanitarians are always present when an emergency arises. Coordination is essential in complex environments like these. The Logistics Cluster is a group of organizations working together to improve the logistics response in emergencies.
The World Food Program was chosen as the lead agency for this cluster due to its expertise in the field of humanitarian logistics. Logistics is a basic and fundamental need for any operation, the backbone of any task, big or small. For humanitarians, it's about getting lifesaving supplies from A to B.
Let's take an example. This organization has come to bring medical supplies to these families. These supplies need to be transported now, but local truck drivers have fled the area, remaining vehicles have already been taken, and fuel has run out. To make matters worse, heavy rain and landslides have made the roads inaccessible, borders are closed due to ongoing conflicts, and ships cannot enter the port.
The organization's lifesaving cargo will have to stay here for now, but where will they store it and how can they quickly inform other organizations about these constraints? Where our partners need it, the logistics cluster provides transport of emergency items by road, air, sea, and river. We facilitate storage space for vital cargo. Where fuel is unavailable, we distribute it. We collect and share vital information to help the humanitarian community make informed decisions. And finally, we offer coordination to hundreds of humanitarian actors, for it's only through working together that the humanitarian community can effectively and efficiently respond to need. Through timely and reliable logistics service support, information, and coordination, the Logistics Cluster ensures the humanitarian community has the ability to save lives.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING]
For further reading (optional):
- Logistics Cluster Website
- Emergency Supply Chain Training Slides by World Food Programme. You can find the slides in Lesson 4 of Canvas.
Private Sector Response in Puerto Rico
Watch: Crowley and FEMA Accelerate Relief Aid to Puerto Rico (1:18 minutes)
KENNETH ORBEN: Well, right now, you're seeing the loading of the barge La Princessa. We started loading this last night at 5:00. So here we are at 8 or 9 o'clock the following morning. We're just finishing it up.
The barge is filled with relief goods. That's containerized cargo, trailers of water, rolling stock, all in support of the relief efforts in Puerto Rico. Crowley's very flexible, and we were able to switch gears right after the hurricane hit and from a primarily commercial operation to supporting the government operation down there and the relief effort.
So we've been working every day since the hurricane hit. Besides the barge you see behind us today, we worked another barge at the JAXPORT terminal. That one will be sailing at noontime today. So we worked two barges simultaneously, and we'll have five more barges working over the next five days, all primarily with relief goods to support the efforts in Puerto Rico.
We all have friends, and there's lots of family in Puerto Rico. So many of our employees here in Jacksonville are putting in the extra effort to support their families in Puerto Rico. So it's really a Herculean effort on the part of everyone here, from the top down. And we really do appreciate everyone's efforts.
Defense Logistics Agency Response to Maria and Sandy
Watch: Logistics On Location: Supporting Hurricane Maria (2:56 minutes)
JOHN CUNNINGHAM: Hurricane Maria was a huge storm, and it came right through the island. FEMA asked the Corps of Engineers to come in and help restore power for the people of Puerto Rico. One of our key partners in that is Defense Logistics Agency. And we're all here for the same purpose, which is to turn the lights on here.
JOHN FINCHEN: The Generator Mission is to lease and/or rent generators. It's a stopgap measure to get people back up and running on their power grid.
TRAVIS MILLER: So the Emergency Power Mission, what we do is we maintain critical facilities. So we keep the infrastructure up, including hospitals, fire departments, police stations, water treatment plants-- lift stations.
LUCIANO SAN VERA: So the biggest challenges, as you can see from the map, number one, is probably the terrain. The other challenge is the aging infrastructure. Parts of it are over 50, 60 years old. It wasn't maintained very well.
TRAVIS MILLER: When you have a mission of this magnitude, DLA comes in and provides us rental generators to help supplement the FEMA-owned generators.
CHRIS DRESEL: FEMA has in its inventory several hundred organically owned generators, specifically slated for disaster response efforts. However, when we cannot meet the needs of the facility, FEMA looks to outside agencies. And we have primarily DLA as our first source to provide those additional generators. DLA has provided over 1,130 generators to support the efforts here on Puerto Rico and the region.
LUCIANO SAN VERA: There's a lot of specialty materials that are only used here in Puerto Rico. They didn't have much of the inventory before the storm actually hit. And with that, we're competing with disasters in Texas, California, and Florida. So everybody's competing for these same materials.
JOHN FINCHEN: So DLA is the primary for the poles, the wires, and all the hardware that goes together to create those circuits so that we can fall back and get rid of the generators and go back to Puerto Rico's main infrastructure. It's all coming across in barges or other means of transportation.
RHONDA MUSTAFAA: So Defense Logistics Agency is a wonderful partner. I can't imagine trying to order $192 million of materials with over 442 lines independently.
NANCY CHURCH: The partnership that we have established prior to this and during this event I think is very instrumental and will be lessons learned that we will be able to carry with us far forward into future response missions.
JOHN FINCHEN: Success for DLA is USACE's success. When USACE can get a circuit energized and see house lights go on or other grid functions operate, we've done our job to help USACE do their job.
TRAVIS MILLER: We all have to work together because no one agency has all the resources to tackle an emergency like this and a disaster like this.
When supply chains break down: Where are the blue tarps?
Read: Puerto Rico: urgently needed tarps delayed by failed $30m FEMA Contract from The Guardian
Geospatial Approaches
Next, let's consider some of the ways geospatial approaches are used in humanitarian logistics and supply chains. Start by reviewing what Esri is doing by watching the following short video, visiting and reviewing the Logistics Planning Website and trying out the Logistics Planning App. After you finish looking at these resources, contrast this work with what Google is doing in this space by looking at their Google Maps Platform: Transportation Website.
Esri Logistics Planning Tools
Watch: Watch this 3:33 minute demonstration video and then explore the live app on the Esri website
PRESENTER: The Logistics Planning application enables emergency response staff to plan logistical operations, manage resource requests, and identify impediments to delivering resources during an incident. This application can be used on its own or in combination with the Situational Awareness Suite and is a configuration of ArcGIS Web App Builder that uses your common operational data to enable you to plan response activities.
When first accessing Logistics Planning, you're presented with staging and points of distribution or pod locations. Commodity staging areas are typically preplanned and located at warehouses that can store lots of supplies and have access for trucks to drop off and pick up.
We can also see our pod locations. These are locations where the public can come to retrieve supplies. Information presented in the pop-up tells us the capacity of this location, including how many cars can be served and what the availability of each type of resource is per day.
Additionally, I have other information that may support me in making decisions regarding the logistics of a response, such as the locations of other established emergency facilities and current information on road closures.
Within the application, I have tools that help me with planning. To get started, I'll click to open the Situation Awareness widget. I have a couple of options for defining my incident boundary. I can either draw on the map using the tools in the widget or select an existing feature and set it as my incident location.
From here, I can use the tabs in the widget to get more information. First, I can determine the impact of the population in this area and therefore, about how many people may need to be supported with these resources.
Next, I can summarize the total capacity for each of the points of distribution. In the distribution capacity tab, I'm presented with the total number of cars that can be serviced each day along with the number of water bottles, meals, ice, and so on.
Lastly, I can identify which staging areas are inside my incident boundary. I do have one staging area and a couple of backups on the outside.
The Logistics Planning application also allows me to evaluate the burn rate of the commodities at each of the pod locations. Using the charts widget, I can visualize the total planned car capacity in blue and the actual cars served in orange. It looks like the King's Grant Elementary School has exceeded its planned capacity, so I know I need to send more supplies.
To assist the drivers, I can use the directions tool to calculate turn by turn instructions that I can then print and send with the truck drivers to help them route between staging areas and pod locations. To do this, I'll simply select my starting location at the staging area and the King's Grant point of distribution location, and the route is calculated for me.
If necessary, I may decide to establish a new pod to help with demand. To do this, I can use the Edit tools to locate a new distribution point. I'll start by using the search tool to find the Larkspur Middle School, then choose the pod template from the Edit tool and create a new pod in the map. Then, I'll populate its attributes. To learn more and configure the Logistics Planning application for your organization, please visit the solution site. Thanks for watching.
What's next with logistics?
We’ll end with a consideration of some of the cutting-edge trends in logistics R&D and practice that are having or have the potential for big impacts on humanitarian and disaster operations.
DHL is one of the major world logistics companies and they produce an annual tech trend assessment for their industry. I'd like you to consider how they characterize the current state of the art and how that is changing rapidly due to developments in technology and operational models. Start with the video and then move on to the report linked below.
Watch: DHL Data Analytics video (1:27 minutes)
This short video and industry report were developed by the commercial logistics company DHL. It provides some useful insights into where the industry is heading and how new technologies are shaking things up. When you watch this, think about what you read and watched previously and consider how these ideas may or may not match up, particularly in the emergency management context.
DHL Data Analytics
[Music]
Data is important to our customer when it has a story behind it. DHL data analytics helps me a lot to understand a specific level of risk for a particular lane. As an example, if you go to a very hot environment—especially for our own products that we have to keep at a temperature of 2 to 8—with very limited stability data, it's going to be extremely useful for us to understand the risk before we even ship the product.
You know, we're using our own internal data to understand certain patterns that you might not see if you just look at a handful of shipments. But if you look at the history of shipments over time, you might detect when a certain weather condition at a certain point in time kind of comes together—then we see temperature excursions.
We've established a tool which allows our customers to quantify their risk in a way that we've never been able to do before. So the primary source of our data is our Life Track system and the smart sensor data loggers that we place on all our shipments.
We're able to bring other data into our system as well. We have a tool that we call Connection. We're able to connect other data sources—we can bring flight data in, we can bring weather data in. The data needs to be connected, and that's what our vision is. We want to have the data platform, the connector, that we can actually combine our customers’ data with our data and make a whole lot more sense out of it.
We complement each other because we give our knowledge further to our suppliers. I'm talking about the airlines, I'm talking about the steamship companies, I'm talking about companies who are responsible for packaging and what have you. So in the whole chain, I think the life science industry benefits from our knowledge, and we can complement each other when it comes to the shipping world.
Over the course of the next five years, those companies that adopt data analytics strategies will be ultra-competitive in the market, and those that don't will deem themselves irrelevant or extinct.
It is ultimately for the patient safety. We want to make sure that this data that we collect and analyze becomes very instrumental when it comes to transporting the cargo—to make sure we deliver the healthcare products to every single patient around the world with product integrity.
[Music]
Review: Logistics Trend Radar Industry Report (also found in Lesson 4 of Canvas)
Deliverable
- Post a comment in the Emerging Theme Discussion (L4) forum that addresses the following prompts:
- Comment on a significant way you think commercial and disaster/humanitarian logistics differ.
- How might one of the emerging trends in logistics benefit disaster/humanitarian logistics, e.g., Uberisation of logistics?
- The initial post should be completed during the first 5 days of the lesson.
- Then, I'd like you to offer additional insights, critiques, a counter-example, or something else constructive in response to your colleagues on three of the following 5 days.
- Brownie points for linking to other technology demos, pictures, blog posts, etc., that you've found to enrich your posts.
NOTE: Respond to this assignment in the Emerging Theme Discussion (L4) forum by the date indicated on the course calendar.
Grading Criteria
This discussion will be graded out of 15 points.
Please see the Discussion Expectations and Grading page under the Orientation and Course Resources module for details.
Term Project - First Draft
Term Project - First Draft jls164This week, you need to finish the first draft of your term project. Your goal should be to make the first draft as high quality as possible, with the idea that doing so will mean you have less work to complete the second (and final) draft.
I have designed the timing of this assignment so that I have time to read your full drafts, offer feedback and editing suggestions, and return them to you with enough time left in the course to revise your work before submitting a final version.
Here are my expectations for your first draft:
- It should be clear who you are writing for and the role you are playing in preparing this report.
- Your draft should be complete, and the topics from your abstract and outline should be covered.
- I understand you may still be working on some of the data analysis and visualization, so I will put a greater emphasis on the rest of the draft. That said, the logic of your analysis should be clear and there should be good progress towards completing your analysis.
- It should be well written using correct grammar and spelling.
- Your draft should not exceed the 3000-word limit (citations and figure captions do not count toward the word limit). A more detailed version of your methodology can be provided in an appendix, and this doesn't count towards your word limit.
- The format of your document should be consistent and elegant.
- You should use a common citation format and apply it consistently. If you don't know which one to use, Chicago Author-Date style is a good default.
Submission and Grading Criteria
Submit your assignment to the Lesson 6 Term Project First Draft dropbox. See the Course Calendar for specific due dates.
Rubric
The first draft of your term project is worth 10% of your final course grade and is graded out of 100 points. For this assignment, I will assign grades with the following rubric:
| Criteria | Description | Possible Points |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction | The introduction meaningfully engages the target audience/reader and clearly presents the central argument along with its substantive, technical and applied contexts. | 15 |
| Background and Supporting Research | The paper is well researched and contains references to peer-reviewed articles, government documents and industry reports that relate to the arguments in a logical manner. References are correctly cited. | 30 |
| Analysis and Interpretations | The design and implementation of a methodology was appropriately used to address the central arguments of your topic. Critical, relevant and consistent connections are made between evidence and central arguments. Includes appropriate use of maps, graphics, and tables. Analytical insights are sound and show a deep understanding of the issues. Depending on your selected topic, this may involve describing the steps taken for data analysis and mapping (NOTE –step by step instructions can be put into an appendix and will not count against word limits – discuss this with the instructor). | 30 |
| Conclusion | Excellent summary of topic and central arguments with concluding statements that impacts the target audience/reader. | 10 |
| Writing | There is evidence of editing and proofreading. Writing is engaging and well-structured with excellent transitions between sentences and paragraphs. Writing is polished and professional. Concepts are integrated in an original manner. | 15 |
Summary and Final Tasks
Summary and Final Tasks ksc17Summary
This week, we moved to the final phase of emergency management - recovery. Recovery from a disaster can take a very long time (many would argue that we are still working on the aftermath of Sandy, for example), and there are a wide range of roles that geospatial perspectives and technologies can play in the recovery process. For example, GIS and mapping may be called upon to identify areas for redevelopment projects or to recalibrate vulnerability models to help predict future disaster impacts.
Talk of recovery plans may begin quite early following a disaster. We learned that during Sandy there were efforts to begin talking about the rebuilding process during the response phase of the disaster. A key challenge that geospatial systems for emergency management must face will be rapidly changing priorities.
Now that we have identified and discussed all four stages of the emergency management process, we will shift focus in the next lesson toward the use of scenarios to plan geospatial systems for emergency management. You've had a bit of experience with these already in your vulnerability assessment work in Lesson 3. Scenarios can be incredibly useful tools to help predict what technology and capabilities a GIS system will need to have to handle all phases of emergency management.
Reminder - Complete all of the Lesson 6 tasks!
You have reached the end of Lesson 6! Double-check the to-do list on the Lesson 6 Overview page to make sure you have completed all of the activities listed there before you begin Lesson 7.