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Arizona Evacuations Project
Protecting the public with a standardized, statewide evacuations dataset
Overview
Arizona has already set a high standard for public information on evacuations, with the successful "Ready, Set, Go!" campaign messaging implemented across all of our counties. This project seeks to build on that spirit to provide statewide, public, and near-real-time evacuation data.
All disasters are local. This project relies on the participation of local jurisdictions and incident management teams as public safety decision-makers when it comes to evacuations. Using lessons learned from historical disasters and following best practices from others in emergency management, we hope to provide timely and authoritative evacuation information to statewide jurisdictional partners and the public.
Lessons and Best Practices
The Camp Fire, Paradise
The firestorm approaches the small town of Paradise, CA
The Camp Fire moved rapidly through the town of Paradise, California: most residents had only a matter of minutes to evacuate, and 85 people died before they could leave harm's way. Warnings were delayed and sometimes not even delivered. The lack of a pre-drawn evacuation plan cost lives.
The following graphic illustrates how quickly the Camp Fire burned through the town of Paradise. From the time the first flames reached the town, it took less than 2 hours to destroy the area: not enough time to draw evacuation zones on the fly.
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The Marshall Fire, Boulder
Fast-moving disasters are the best argument for evacuation planning. Brushfires in the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) and flash flooding are two examples of incidents with very little warning. Local jurisdictions that pre-draw evacuation zones based on known hazard assessments, vulnerability analysis, and appropriate traffic egress routes have the advantage when it comes to issuing timely evacuation orders.
The Marshall Fire burns through a neighborhood in Superior, Colorado, December 30, 2021
At around 10:30 am on December 30, 2021, a drought-stricken brush area outside of Superior, Colorado caught fire. Driven by 60+ mph winds, the Marshall Fire spread with stunning speed. It became the costliest wildfire in Colorado history in terms of structure loss: 1084 homes and businesses were destroyed. The fire also killed 2 people and hundreds of pets, whose owners were unable to reach them for evacuation due to the fast-moving flames.
According to the Colorado Sun,
Boulder County officials have said dispatchers were sketching out zones to send evacuation alerts on the fly ... a process that can lengthen the time it takes to send them out. There’s a quicker way ... having pre-drawn zones “greatly reduces” the time needed to get alerts ready to send.
The following example map shows the evacuation zones and notifications sent out by Everbridge, a public warning platform. Other common such platforms include CodeRED and Rave Mobile Safety.
Marshall Fire Example
Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) require quick entry of polygon boundaries to be effective and timely
The evacuation zones for the Marshall Fire were reactive to the incident, which slowed the process. In some of the zones, the notification was received as much as an hour after the fire had already burned through.
While the rapidity of the fire's spread made evacuations challenging, Boulder County's Office of Emergency Management successfully leveraged ArcGIS to bring the public up-to-date information on the evacuation zones (once they were established) through a web application. This pre-launched app was advertised through the media, and members of the public could immediately see whether their address was affected by an evacuation order.
Boulder Emergency Operations - Public Information Map
The California Governor's Office of Emergency Services (CalOES)
California is no stranger to disaster evacuations. Over the last few years, the state has developed a robust and standardized dataset for evacuation zone status with participation from most of the 58 counties.
The dataset is built from a variety of sources:
- Zonehaven, a paid evacuation planning and notification platform
- Local county GIS and emergency management offices using ArcGIS Rest APIs
- Local sheriffs' offices and jurisdictions drawing KML files on Google Earth or Open Street Map
California Evacuations Example
The data is hosted on the state's Enterprise system and processed using FME Workbench. The CalOES team kindly shared the FME workflow with the Arizona Evacuations Project team as a framework to build a similar workflow for our state.
The following application is a good example of how this type of planning can benefit the public and save lives.
This public web application allows residents to find out their evacuation zone by searching their address. These zones are pre-drawn for quick status change during a fire or flood.
The Workflow
The Arizona Evacuations process is designed to be a collaborative effort between AZ DEMA and county, tribal, and local jurisdictions, hosted and facilitated through the AZGeo platform. This shared effort ensures common data interoperability and timely information to the public.
Disasters don't follow jurisdictional boundaries.
Many of Arizona's recent floods and wildfires have crossed county lines: the Telegraph Fire and Backbone Fire in 2021 both required cross-jurisdictional cooperation between counties for evacuations and road closures.
Telegraph Fire 2021 Evacuations and Progression
Local Jurisdictions
First, local authorities such as the county Sheriff's Office and emergency management work together on the evacuation plan for their jurisdiction. This includes both zones (polygons) and routes (lines). Ideally, such features can be drawn prior to an incident; however, even if a county does draw on the fly, the resulting layer can still be uploaded into the larger statewide dataset.
The features should be drawn in ArcGIS (best) or in Google Earth/KML (still workable).
Counties or jurisdictions that choose a vendor such as Zonehaven to help manage their evacuation and notification process are also easily incorporated into the dataset.
DEMA and the FME Workbench
DEMA's role is two-fold. First, we will create a simple schema for the evacuation zones, based on California's model. Second, we will run the FME Workbench process with the input from local jurisdictions, and publish the resulting feature service on AZGeo.
California's FME workflow will serve as a template for the Arizona project
When new data is entered, webhooks are used to initiate the FME process and push the updates through the feature service. This reduces the need for scheduled updates, saves cost, and prevents error replication.
The AZGeo Group
The working group will serve as a collaboration space for the datasets, resources, and applications. For those willing to test pilot the evacuation zone standardization process, this working group will also meet regularly to discuss the workflow, schema, and creation of the dataset.
The group is open to anyone with an AZGeo account. To create one, click here:
The Results
The end result of this project will be a collaboration facilitated by AZGeo between local jurisdictions and DEMA to create statewide, standardized evacuation zone data: open, publicly available, and authoritative.
We need your help!
Are you involved in GIS, emergency management, or public safety in your jurisdiction? If so, please consider contributing to this effort. With a strong collaboration amongst all of Arizona's counties and tribes, our state will have real-time information on evacuations to save the lives of people and animals.