A Multi-Agency Approach to Disaster Management: From Flooding to Infrastructure Failures, Lincolnshire Resilience Forum Leverages Esri UK’s Real-Time Mapping Dashboard for Rapid Decision-Making and Community Resilience
by DRONELIFE Staff Author Ian J. McNabb
The Lincolnshire Resilience Forum (LRF) recently adopted latest technology from geospatial services firm Esri UK to boost its response capability to a wide selection of emergencies, including flooding, lack of critical infrastructure, pandemics, or severe weather. Covering over 2000 square miles and 750000 residents, the LRF is a multi-agency partnership encompassing a wide selection of presidency services and first responders designed to guard human life during emergencies.
Because of Lincolnshire’s relatively high risk of flooding, Esri’s mapping software was used to discover which residents would must be evacuated within the event of a tidal inundation. One particular focus was vacation-oriented mobile homes, that are difficult to map because of registration and land-use policies. Lincolnshire has the very best density of “stationary caravans” of anywhere in Europe, so a significant focus of the project is protecting the vital hospitality and vacation industry. This system is creating “digital twins” of high-risk zones that may be used to map out evacuation routes, which can also be especially vital around Control of Major Accident Hazards (COMAH) locations, which involve dangerous substances equivalent to gas and oil refineries.
“Responding to large emergencies – particularly flooding but additionally major transport incidents or the lack of critical infrastructure – is an important role of public services. With the climate crisis comes more extreme weather events, which suggests community resilience is much more vital,” explained Steve Eason-Harris, Emergency Planning Officer at Lincolnshire County Council, who’s the lead officer for GIS and Resilient Communities for the LRF.
“Lincolnshire is a big county with no motorways and few dual carriageways so response and evacuation planning is critical. These latest innovations are enabling emergency planners to model risks affecting the county to maximise response, improve communication and coordination and reduce, as practicably as possible, the impacts on the broader communities of the county. Creating the brand new caravan dataset particularly will dramatically improve intelligence.”
The project is powered by Esri’s real-time mapping dashboard, which first got here online in 2022 and was fully online by the point of Storm Babet. Available on computers, mobile devices and huge touch screens within the County Emergency Centre, it integrates data from over 30 agencies to permit for rapid decision-making, allowing for improved responsiveness in comparison with the previous paper maps and spreadsheets.
More information on Esri UK is on the market here.
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