Quick Storm Response in South Bend

How city teams leveraged GIS for a coordinated cleanup effort in May 2020

by Bill Moody

Severe weather is often unpredictable and damage caused by a thunderstorm, ice storm, or blizzard can greatly disrupt the lives of our city’s residents. South Bend is proud to have multiple departments that can respond to these situations as soon as they occur. South Bend Sewers, Streets, and Venues, Parks & Arts act as a joint task force that provide relief to the city following these events. Management and crews hit the streets clearing debris, reporting safety issues, and responding to calls placed by residents to restore order.

This collaborative effort created some logistical challenges; with many crews reporting to many supervisors, communication chains and proper coordination had the potential to break down. This loss of efficiency could have heavy ramifications due to the severity of the damage that these storms may cause. Department leaders recognized this problem and recruited the Department of Innovation & Technology’s (I&T) GIS team to support them in optimizing their effort.

Through some investigation we learned that all three groups were using GIS maps and applications to track the damage caused by these storms, but they were not using the same maps or even the same data sets. The Street Department could be sending a crew across town to investigate a report of a fallen tree, completely unaware that VPA had already recorded this information and had a cleanup crew enroute. This communication gap provided the GIS team with a great opportunity to bring these departments together and empower them to build a tool to better support this process.

Goals:

• Centralization of data — Create an authoritative set of data based on the users input that would then be referenced by all departments
• Standardization of the workflow — Provide an opportunity for department directors, managers, and supervisors to sit together and decide how the process will work and build the data and GIS application in a manner that would facilitate
• Ease of use — The job of storm cleanup is not easy; users shouldn’t be burdened with over-complicated data entry.

May 23rd this year was a beautiful sunny Saturday, until around 8:00 PM. Dark clouds rolled in bringing heavy rains and strong winds with gusts around 60 MPH. The storm was short lived, lasting only 20 minutes but its effects were felt throughout the city. Streets flooded, Trees were uprooted, limbs were torn down, and the local electricity utility, I&M, reported nearly 11,000 people without power.

Crews spent the next several days working around the clock in the cleanup effort. This provided them with their first chance to utilize the newly established Storm Damage Response Map. This storm produced nearly 400 new incidents as documented by the mapping software. Through the application, crews recorded the nature of the incident, where it took place, what effort and equipment would be required to resolve it, and also stored the photographic documentation. With this data collected, supervisors could then prioritize the incidents, coordinate, and direct crews in an efficient manner.

The teams also utilized an online dashboard to help monitor the overall status of the project. This provided real-time statistics based on the data that was constantly being updated from field crews. The built-in filters and charts made it easy to visualize the current state of the clean up effort. It also broke down the data, enabling categorization and cataloging of completed work. This information could provide oversite to crew leaders letting them know if they needed to shift their focus.

The damage caused by severe storms creates a rigorous and hectic work environment for our employees and their efforts should be applauded. GIS integration has allowed our City’s storm response crews to better and more efficiently coordinate their cleanup effort. Using these new tools to visualize and categorize these incidents as they happen has eased the burden placed on the crews. It has also provided a centralized hub where multiple departments from our city can assemble and work as a single team.

Bill Moody is the GIS Manager for the City of South Bend.