A New Vision for Emergency Management

Charles Cyrille, Division Director, Miami-Dade County

The emergency management space continues to be made more aware on how to deal with natural and human-made disasters. GIS is a new tool for emergency managers, which has been helped them deal with the disaster management, right from preparedness, to response, and recovery. In an interview with Charles Cyrille, Division Director, Miami- Dade County, he discusses how to improve decision support systems in assessing risks associated with natural disasters and helping governments in mitigation and planning.

"With integration of GIS applications with our incident management software, the information is almost instantaneously being made available to our public and to our elected officials"

What are some of the widely prevalent challenges you notice in the Emergency Management Landscape?

One of the major challenges is the resonance against the expectation of information and the speed at which the public wants it. They want the information to be at their fingertips, i.e. their tablets, PCs, or their smartphones, to gather information immediately in a way similar to how they handle it in their day to day experiences. This means that in the event of a disaster or emergency, they would expect information to be provided in the same manner and at the same speed. We have tried to provide that information as quickly as possible with the development of mobile applications. Additionally we have tried to merge the information that we get from our incident management software with GIS applications that provide information as its being entered.

In the past we would get information, gather it from stakeholder agencies, digest that information and disseminate it in the form of a report. This process isn’t fast enough to our public anymore; they want the information as quickly as we are receiving it. But now with integration of GIS applications with our incident management software, the information is almost instantaneously being made available to our public and to our elected officials. This means that they can see the information real-time and provide protective action decisions based on emergency management recommendations or just informing the public of latest evacuation, new evacuation routes or timing of bus pick up points. We have identified the means by which we take incident management software and have had multiple conversations with our partners that handle a lot of our GIS applications. They have thus come to an understanding that we can develop the information and project that in a format if applicable using GIS software applications and have been able to integrate that with multiple applications So as we are entering information and creating evacuation zones we can see that information and everyone else can see that information almost instantaneously.

What are some of the recent trends set to transform Emergency Management landscape?

We have highlighted our partnership with our IT departments respectively whether they are municipal, county wide or federal. These partners have been influential in providing us with their knowledge in how we can better prepare and enhance our capabilities and improve cybersecurity. A couple of years ago, IT departments were fundamental to developing technologies as well as incorporating them into our daily work. But as far as making them have a seat at their table and having their input on cybersecurity is currently evolving. We have put it on the fore front and taking definite strides towards making them a part of our homeland security operation.

Could you shed some light on the approach that you follow while choosing the right solution provider?

One of the vital things we need to understand is that our traditional way of partnering is no longer satisfactory. The previous dogma has to be revised and rewritten; we have to think about who are our new partners. Additionally, utilization of drones has been a big thing lately. So now we are incorporating that technology in addition to discussing things with our cyber and IT partner to talk about cybersecurity. The utilization of drones brings a new group of individuals into the cadre. They have to have the ability to fly these drones and have appropriate licenses. So we have to explore how we leverage their experiences and current licensing to better improve our abilities in large scale incidents. We have looked at the drones and have formulated a drone bureau and we are currently enhancing our resources that utilize drones post incidents to look at damage assessment, locate individuals that need assistance in our community where our traditional vehicles cannot get to. So utilizing this capability and the ability to geo locate the level of damage and location of the damage is something that we have integrated into our emergency managements working groups as well. So that in addition to our IT partners is been the part of the latest innovation that we have tried to incorporate into our operations.

What are the strategic points that you go by to steer the company forward?

Our leadership team has an expectation and we discuss around setting that expectation. They are also expecting the provision of information instantaneously. One of the common incidents that we have faced on here is hurricanes; we are providing information to our leadership and are also competing with the local television networks that are going 24 hours and the weather channel which is dedicated to strictly weather. So we are trying to provide information as well and are looking to recommend protective actions. So the technology has been provided to us and we need to leverage it to provide the information to our leadership as quickly as possible in a digestible form. Thus, by the use of GIS application and the certain type of dashboards in accommodation with our incident management software has been a great benefit to us.

One of the other things we stress on is the tabulation of the information. The previous description of “what an emergency manager needs to be,” has evolved. We are now looking for individuals with IT background not just dabbling in the IT but having that as a foundation of their education. We are also looking for those that have accounting background as well. Also, we are focusing on providing information to our federal partners when the unfortunate circumstances happen having a federal declaration. We have to arm ourselves with the ability to provide them with the information that they are seeking and that’s tabulating all the current recovery damages or expenses that are related to that incident. We have to be able to speak intelligently to them and provide that information in its digestible form so that they are able to understand it and place themselves in a more defensible position. We are not just seeking hands out hoping for federal assistance but still helping in partnership with them to provide them the direction as to what kind of an assistance we physically need.

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