In 2006, the Massachusetts Task Force 1 (MA-TF1) Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) team was assigned to conduct structural triage of a 2-mile-diameter residential area that had been damaged by a chemical plant explosion on the day before Thanksgiving. A heavy rainstorm was forecast for that evening, so it was vital to know which structures were salvageable, which could be occupied and which would need to be razed. We searched and triaged more than 150 structures using a paper-and-pen system, producing a damage assessment for each building. The process took approximately 12 hours, largely due to the bottleneck of correlating information on paper. Although each structure had been photographed, it was laborious to correlate them to a map.
When I think about that incident now, I realize how much more quickly and efficiently our task could have been completed had we been using a new technology that’s greatly enhancing search, rescue and recovery missions: photo geo-tagging and mapping.
Faster & Easier
Geo-tagging is the process of encoding digital photographs with the GPS latitude and longitude location information of where the photograph was taken. The images are then incorporated into GIS mapping tools, creating a rich, multimedia representation of an incident. As you can imagine, geo-tagged photos greatly enhance situational awareness for large incidents and events.
Geo-tagged photos are useful in a public safety response, both for documentation of the incident and for tactical purposes. Consider a scenario where there are numerous sites of interest located across a broad geographic area. The initial recon team is equipped with a geo-tagging system. They photograph each site of interest, and then quickly lay those images on a map to gain a bird’s-eye perspective of the situation. For example, during Hurricane Katrina, US&R teams were tasked with documenting the location of deceased victims so that recovery teams could return for the remains. If the US&R teams had geo-tagging capabilities at the time, a single photo of a victim with the location coordinates displayed on the front would have helped the recovery teams find the victims more efficiently, while also ensuring the deceased victim was not a new find.
Think back to the scenario at the beginning of this article. If the photographs we’d taken of the structures surrounding the explosion had contained geo-tagged information, triage would have been greatly accelerated. Rather than working everything out on paper, we could have rapidly produced a map showing which structures were obviously destroyed, the most efficient path for crews to board up the structures that were salvageable, and which families could return to their homes in time for the holiday.
Because of these promising benefits, disaster management personnel are beginning to utilize such technology. Geo-tagged photos proved helpful during the 2009 flooding of the Red River in Fargo, N.D. By taking a geo-tagged photo of the current river level, then overlaying it on a satellite image of the river’s normal level, FEMA was able to quickly visualize just how far beyond its normal banks the river had gone.
How It’s Done
There are many methods for embedding GPS location data into a digital image; they vary in ease of use, cost, accuracy of location and quality of image. The most accurate, highest-quality image links a standard GPS directly to a digital camera using a special interface, but is also the most expensive method.
MA-TF1 has had very good results with the Canon 40D Digital SLR, using the Canon Wireless File Transmitter adapter to connect to a Garmin GPS Map 60CSx. While bulky and a little cumbersome, this combination has delivered very accurate results at a cost of around $3,000.
An increasing number of devices, including many Smartphone and Blackberry devices, are either incorporating a GPS into the cameras or incorporating a camera into the GPS. There is a trade-off between quality of image and GPS accuracy with these devices, but they are also simple to use and less expensive. We’ve had very good results with the Nikon Coolpix P6000 camera with integrated GPS. The camera is compact, produces high-quality images and is less than $500.
The least expensive method uses computer software to geo-tag digital pictures using the timestamp of a GPS track log. This means a responder would carry their existing camera and GPS, and use computer software to combine the two data sources. Although this method involves the most steps at a computer, it can be done with little or no investment. One major benefit of software-based solutions is that the images can be modified to show the location as a watermark directly on the image and also can be easily integrated with consumer GIS tools such as Google Earth.
One More Tool
Electronically encoding GPS coordinates to digital photographs adds a new dimension of information to incident documentation and situational awareness. The technology has advanced to a point where high-quality images can be tagged with very accurate location information for relatively low cost. While not appropriate for every incident, geo-tagging is another tool first responders should consider for a variety of incidents, from large-scale search to recovery operations.
For more on the 2009 Fargo floods, go to http://tinyurl.com/09FargoFlood.
