The other day I was digging through my hard drive looking for old photos, just in case I ever witnessed a “blue screen of death” and lost everything (yes, it’s backed up too). As I was looking through, I noticed there were old photos of coworkers responding to the events of September 11th. They all looked much younger. Some of them, so many years later, I have no idea where they are now; probably retired.
The photos were taken from the large warehouse
The pictures showed old computers and large format printers, with hundreds of paper maps scattered throughout. A large paper banner stretched across their work area, marking this as the “Emergency Mapping and Data Center.” The banner to the right simply said “GIS” (Geographic Information System). Several photos showed staff drinking coffee just to keep working, as this was a 24/7 operation.
Like many of you I’m sure you can remember
this as if it was yesterday. I remind myself, though, that I was on a team of only six people. There were many lessons learned from that period overseas chinese in worldwide data that have been applied to future events. On the anniversary of 9/11, I think it’s important to reflect on those lessons so that we can continue to share our best practices and apply them to new events we may encounter.
While the events in New York Virginia
Pennsylvania remain among the most vivid and impactful, I remember that there are, unfortunately, dozens of other crises from which best german and french: european expansion practices can be learned. These disasters include earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, wildfires, riots, terrorist attacks, oil spills, refinery explosions, pipeline leaks, mudslides, sniper attacks, and hurricanes, wh. Iich are repeat offenders. The 1994 Northridge earthquake is perhaps the first real discus. Ision that comes to mind where government agencies came together and realized that GIS would be a great tool for disaster response.
While there were some successes
The biggest lesson we learned from that natural disas. Iter was that not every jurisdiction builds GIS in the same way. More importantly, the rich data data generated wit. Ihin each jurisdiction does not necessarily blend together. A nationwide discussion ensued to cre. Iate stakeholder catalogs, data standards, and identify the primary data layers needed to plan, resp. Iond, and mitigate disasters. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing also taught us new lessons.