HC OHSEM Geospatial Roadmap

A set of core principles guided the geospatial roadmap process to ensure the roadmap was actionable, flexible, and consumable.

Inclusive: The strategy incoporates input from a cross-section of the oganization's stakeholders

Value-focused: The strategy prioritizes opportunities that deliver material benefits to the overall organization

Best Practices: The strategy prioritizes industy best practices alongside emerging trends

Collaborative: The strategy was developed and validated via collaboration with department and agency stakeholders

The interests of any Emergency Operations Center (EOC) are inherently geographic in nature. Without consideration for location, an EOC cannot effectively manage its assets or deliver services to the public. Through robust geospatial solutions, an EOC empowers itself with location intelligence.

Location intelligence is the ability to derive insights from geographic information. There is increasing recognition of the value that location intelligence provides in support of public service delivery.

HC OHSEM is an inclusive and collaborative community that supports one another and is able, given staffing and funding challenges. The GIS community within HC OHSEM is small but mighty and has had numerous successes, even in the most challenging of circumstances. Looking forward, HC OHSEM strives to become a place where innovation and insights are derived from location information is available throughout the departments and agencies, which will come from increased awareness and continuing to enable staff.

The Strategic Roadmap will guide the GIS work of HC OHSEM as it grows and responds to the evolving needs of residents and stakeholders. Over the next two to three years, the roadmap will point toward maintaining and improving the qualities that make Harris County OHSEM outstanding. The plan articulates areas of strategic focus which will target the County’s efforts and resources in ways intended to have the greatest impact in the key focus areas over the life of the plan.

Build and maintain a modern Request for Information (RFI) Workflow to consolidate, track, and promote GIS requests during "Grey Sky" events following established best practices.

• Utilize ArcGIS Insights for data visualization
• Identify additional opportunities to directly connect to other systems and data sources utilizing current workflows
• Conduct a comprehensive systematic review and health check to identify opportunities to increase efficiency, understand current capabilities, and assess the system for planned increases in usage and content creation.

Increase access to and understanding of geospatial capabilities to promote self-service, collaboration, and decision support.

• Transform service delivery.
• Develop and share out focused learning plans for spatial tools and solutions, including ArcGIS Dashboards, ArcGIS Basics, ArcGIS StoryMaps, ArcGIS Survey123, ArcGIS Hub, ArcGIS Field Maps, and Experience Builder.
• Grow workforce capabilities.
• Formalize quarterly engagements with department and agency leads.

Enable access to a collection of authoritative data for relevant maps, apps, and other geospatial assets across divisions.

• Utilize a central hub for all existing SharePoint data to be easily accessible in "Grey Sky" events.
• Increase awareness of the geospatial landscape.
• Implement prioritized solutions.
• Enable strategic initiatives.
• Identify and support data stewards for high-priority data sources.
• Work towards centralized, modernized, and easy-to-access authoritative data sources.
• Build out applications and map templates to increase opportunities for self-service scenarios.

Ensure that decision makers, partnering organizations, and the public are aware of the services and data available.

• Utilizing ArcGIS hub premium community users for stakeholder engagement outside of the organization.
• Actively reach out to promote awareness.
• Establish a geospatial community of practice with regular check-ins to collaborate and increase the application of location intelligence.
• Continue to cultivate existing partnerships and develop new partnerships where applicable.
• Identify other high-impact needs that are non-Emergency or disaster response related, and develop a spatial app or dashboard that will be valuable internally and to the public.

Become a leader in harnessing innovative location-intelligence technology and integrating with new and existing systems to support organization-wide objectives.

• Support innovation and exploration of existing solutions to avoid starting from scratch or going custom.
• Modernize public user interfaces and data access.
• Continue to digitize paper-based workflows to reduce repetitive data entry and make collected data, including images, available via a centralized database.
• Look for opportunities to integrate or connect with other enterprise systems.

Planning

Intel

Logistics

Operations

Training

Communications

Leadership