Issues in National Shelter System Puerto Rico Locations

Data Quality Problems Encountered During Tropical Storm Karen's Impact on Puerto Rico

CEDR Admin

October 2, 2019

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During our activation for Tropical Storm Karen, CEDR Digital Corps leveraged our crowdsourcing volunteers and automated processes to collect and maintain a list of shelters as they opened throughout Puerto Rico.

CEDR has created similar shelter lists for all major storms that have impacted the United States since early 2018 (Florence, Michael, Barry, Dorian, and Karen, among others). Our dataset has been presented as a layer on NAPSG Foundation's Situational Awareness and Public Information maps, and is used by FEMA and other government and nonprofit agencies and organizations to assist the public.

While our focus is on gathering information published by local authorities at the city or county level, we also seek to ensure that our list encompasses all shelters opened by the Red Cross , and as a result monitor the National Shelter System (NSS) Open list throughout an activation.

Where the NSS lists shelters we were not yet aware of that appear credible, we add them to our list, so that we present a single, comprehensive dataset of shelters that includes all those on the NSS Open list, but goes beyond and incorporates the shelters announced and operated at the local level that the NSS does not generally include.

During our activation for Karen, as we reviewed the NSS Open list, we identified a significant number of cases where the lat/long coordinates provided for shelters were inaccurate --- often significantly so.

Of the 93 shelters which appeared at some time as open on the NSS list during Karen, 36 were found to be incorrectly located on the NSS feature layer (39%).

This chart breaks down the 39% with errors by the driving distance between the NSS location and CEDR's corrected location.

This story map, and the underlying ArcGIS map and datasets (all of which are freely downloadable), provides the result of CEDR's efforts to identify these location issues and also to identify the correct location for each shelter. It is our hope that by providing this feedback, the NSS itself can be corrected, so that when the next incident impacts Puerto Rico, there will be confidence that those seeking shelter will have a reliable source of information in the NSS to guide them to safety.

Our basic methodology for determining the correct location for shelters is straightforward: by utilizing resources such as Google Maps and OpenStreetMap , we were generally able to find shelters and confirm visually that when a shelter is listed as a school, there does indeed appear to be a school labeled with the expected name and a building or buildings that look credibly like a school, are shown in the satellite imagery view of the location.

While this proved sufficient for many shelters, in other cases, our Spanish language translation team (some of whom are from Puerto Rico) proved essential to identifying the appropriate shelter locations.

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To visualize the issues we have identified with NSS shelter locations, CEDR created an ArcGIS web map: NSS PR Shelter Location Issues .

Each shelter issue is represented by two icons of the same color: square icons indicate the NSS location for a shelter; circles represent the location CEDR believes to be correct for that same shelter. Given the significant investment by the Humanitarian Open StreetMap team in mapping Puerto Rico's buildings and infrastructure during Hurricane Maria and other incidents, the Open StreetMap basemap is extremely useful in confirming the correct location for shelters. If additional context or validation is needed, the map's basemap can also be changed to show satellite imagery for further confirmation.

Please click on the NSS location for a shelter (square icons) to view a pop-up that contains the address of the shelter and at the bottom, a link to 'Show Related Records'.

(Note that these steps must be taken from the full-screen view of the map , not from within this Story Map).

Clicking 'Show Related Records' will open the attribute table at the bottom of the screen and show the CEDR location for the shelter. Clicking on the attribute table row will also select the CEDR location icon and highlight it on the map.

CEDR has structured the dataset for the NSS shelter locations with the same fields / columns as the standard NSS Open dataset, and also includes CEDR's recommended x/y location, shelter name, and address information. The layer's underlying data is freely exportable in multiple formats from the ArcGIS item details page .

A Google Sheets version of the dataset is also available. This version contains two additional columns on the far right which provide automatically generated links to Google Maps views of both the NSS and CEDR locations for each shelter, enabling an easier validation process.

Recommendations

CEDR recommends the following potential next steps:

FEMA and the Red Cross should review in detail the 36 shelters we have provided corrected locations. If any are found to actually be correct in their NSS locations, we'd of course appreciate that feedback. However, for those shelters we have shown to be in need of correction, we hope the NSS can be updated ASAP to ensure its readiness before the next incident .

Recommendations

Given the significant percentage of NSS shelters in Puerto Rico that were found to have incorrect locations, CEDR recommends that a full review of ALL shelters in Puerto Rico be conducted, with each shelter's location to be verified against Google Maps, satellite imagery, or OpenStreetMap maps. CEDR would welcome participating in such an effort, and would also suggest that this type of validation is a core capability of the HOT OpenStreetMap team .

Recommendations

A process should be established for organizations such as CEDR and more importantly, the general public to provide feedback on NSS shelter locations and other information. A simple form added to the Red Cross shelter map could create a feedback loop for the NSS dataset that would allow many location errors or other data quality issues to be quickly identified and resolved during an incident.

Recommendations

FEMA and the Red Cross should conduct a review of the quality assurances processes currently in place for the NSS and identify opportunities for improvement. If they do not exist already, KPI's should be established such as # of data issues identified per period; turnaround time for resolving issues found during an incident, and similar common development best practices.

The U.S. Digital Service has created a Digital Services Playbook that presents a set of best practices and "plays" which would be an excellent reference to use in assessing the current processes for the NSS and for envisioning future improvements.

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