Transportation Infrastructure Assessment in Field Emergencies Operations

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Transportation Infrastructure Assessment in Field
Emergencies Operations

• September 2008
• GeOnG

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Agenda

• Information collection and dissemination in
  emergencies
• Why is standardization of data collection needed?
• The UNSDI-T standards for describing transport
  infrastructure
• How the assessment works
• Assessment exercise
• Information products from your assessments
• Discussion

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Infrastructure in Emergencies
How is the road?

• During a humanitarian response, this is a key
  question.
• With hundreds, possibly thousands of responders
  moving around
• A massive amount of information about the roads
  (and bridges, fuel points, ports, airstrips, etc)
  is available
• However, capturing and publishing it for
  everyones benefit is a challenge

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UNJLCs Role

• In a deployment, one of UNJLCs roles is to
  collect and disseminate information about
  infrastructure to the humanitarian community
• Dissemination is relatively easy
• Collection is relatively difficult

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The Easy Part Disseminating Information

• Pakistan Travel times and distances

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The Easy Part Disseminating Information

• Sudan Road quality and seasonality, airfields
  info from pilots

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The Easy Part Disseminating Information

• Pakistan Basic road mapping (existing data was
  wrong)

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The Easy Part Disseminating Information
Open Street map Uploading maps to your GPS
receiver and/or cell phone!
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The Hard Part Collecting Logistics Info

• Loose data collection formats
• interpretational errors/subjectivity
• typos/unreliability
• time-intensive to transfer to structured database
• Semantic and classification inconsistencies
• mixed spectra redundancy
• not speaking the same language
• meters vs. miles
• coordinate systems
• Duplicated efforts, unreliability, slow
  turn-around time of products

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The Hard Part Collecting Logistics Info
The road to Ghari Habibullah is closed. Which
Ghari Habibullah? From where? Via what route?
Where exactly is the closure? How closed is it?
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The Hard Part Collecting Logistics Info

• Sources of confusion in infrastructure reports
• Information gaps (Which Ghari Habibullah?)
• Differences in terminology (Closed for what kind
  of traffic?)
• To eliminate the confusion and streamline the
  process, we had to
• Determine what information is required (keep the
  data collection task as light as possible, but
  still get useful info)
• Develop and accepted terminology for logistics
  infrastructure

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The Hard Part Collecting Logistics Info

• Emergency assessments are only one driver for
  standardization. Other benefits
• Data sharing
• Data preparedness
• Consistent documentation among agencies
• Faster production of various documents from the
  same set of data
• Maps
• Reports (Logistics Capacity Assessments)
• Web-based tools
• A UN-wide initiative is underway to standardize
  geographic information UNSDI
• UNJLC is the architect and custodian of the
  Transport/Logistics component UNSDI-T

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Mapping Transport Infrastructure Status
HAITI Mapping practicability of roads and damage
to bridges
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Road assessment report
Uganda Reporting narrative information on road
status and repair efforts
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Mapping Transport Infrastructure Status
Google Earth delivery of information
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Components of the UNSDI-T

• OBJECTS infrastructure assets or things that
  affect them
• Road, bridge, warehouse, navigable waterway,
  beach, railway, heli landing zone, etc.
• Objects have ATTRIBUTES things we want to know
  about the object
• Surface material of a road, length of a bridge,
  volume of a warehouse, depth of a navigable
  channel, hazards near an HLZ, etc.
• Some attributes have DOMAINS pre-defined sets of
  values that are acceptable for an attribute
• For road surface paved (asphalt or concrete),
  gravel/murram, dirt/sand, etc.
• Attributes without domains are things like runway
  length, where a number will suffice (thought the
  unit of measure, meters, has to be pre-defined),
  or a notes field for narrative information.

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How the Assessment Works

• Assessing other transport objects
• Identify Heli Landing Zones
• Inventory of Bridges
• Beach landings
• Warehouses
• Ports
• Waterways
• Objects, attributes and domains complete.
  Assessment forms in draft.
• Other UNSDI Components will eventually adopt
  similar procedures allowing a standardized
  approach to early-response assessments (not an
  official list)
• Health
• Security
• Water and Sanitation
• Education
• Food Security

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How the Assessment Works
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How the Assessment Works
X
035
X
039
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How the Assessment Works
The form knows what 035 is.
The GPS knows where 035 is.
035 E321523.7 N011746.9 039 E321732.1 N0
11942.7
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How the Assessment Works
040
X
X
034
037
X
X
037
040
037
034
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How the Assessment Works
040
039 Damaged Bridge
035 Flooded Road
037
034
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How the Assessment Works
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From Data to Information

• Outputs
• Rapidly produced information products for the
  field
• Data for future operations as well as a resource
  for local government and other institutions
• Because it is standardized, the UNSDI-T
  encourages the sharing and synchronizing of data
  from a wide range of users