Lessons Learned from Post-Sandy Advisory Mapping

Lessons Learned from Post-Sandy Advisory Mapping

Presenter: Stephanie Routh, Dewberry () 602.281.9726

Co-Author: Paul Weberg, FEMA Region II ()

Jean Huang, Dewberry () 703.849.0264

FEMA desperately needed advisory mapping to inform recovery and rebuilding efforts after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy in late October 2012. Many coastline communities in NJ and NY are dependent on revenue from summertime tourism, so the urgency in rebuilding drove very tight schedules. This project was a “game changer” in our industry - it changed the way FEMA disseminates and utilizes GIS technologies.

This work was conducted by Risk Assessment, Mapping and Planning Partners (RAMPP) – a JV of Dewberry, URS and ESP within a larger Post-Sandy Task Order for FEMA, to develop advisory flood risk information in the form of flood elevations and floodplains for the Sandy-affected areas of NJ and NY for use in guiding rebuilding decisions (where to rebuild and how high to elevate structures to be safe). All of this great data (otherwise known as Advisory Base Flood Elevations – ABFEs) would be for naught if it was too complex for an average homeowner to digest it easily and take action, which is where our technology innovation came into play. The tools and services that we built utilizing FEMA’s ArcGIS Online, named the FEMA GeoPlatform, and their Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) infrastructure supporting the GeoPlatform, makes for an improved user experience, which is the basis for their success.

This information to allow rebuilding to a higher standard, making the communities more resilient and better able to withstand future storms. This project also gave our client more credibility within their own agency, proving that mitigation has a place during the response and recovery after an event – they were able to provide accurate date quickly that communities could use in rebuilding stronger and safer for the future.