Disaster Pilot 2021

Disaster Pilot 2021 is now complete. Readiness Guides can be found here. Reports will be published here. A recording of the final demo event is here. Other videos and persistent demos will soon be available. And stay tuned as Disaster Pilot 2022 gets underway.

A disaster strikes, piling on to or cascading into additional disaster situations. Overwhelming, but preparation and coordination of scalable response capacity meets the challenge. Disaster relief forces from supporting jurisdictions quickly integrate and analyze vast streams of realtime data from multiple sources to monitor the evolving situation and plan their responses. Hybrid scalable cloud-based systems bring advanced AI processing, machine learning algorithms, and simulation models right to where earth observation and other data is already uplinked, prepared, and curated, generating analysis ready data with the characteristics, scale and speed that the complex situation demands. Convenience API’s, as well as download-and-go geopackage containers and viewers, bring decision ready information directly to field workers’ mobile devices even in resource-constrained, low-connectivity areas. Meanwhile, Web publication of “structured data” that link well-known content with up-to-the-minute situation observations enables search engines to push disaster-relevant information up in search results and help the public to stay on top of fast-moving events. All of this is possible through the preparation of technologies, geospatial standards, and data sharing arrangements that bring the right information at the right time to the right people in the right place.

 Following on the successes of Disaster Pilot 2019, the OGC Disaster Pilot 2021 brings all the above mentioned technologies together. Though elements have been explored and tested in various scenarios, it is the OGC’s unique position in the center of the geospatial marketplace that allows a single pilot to explore and test key state-of-the art technologies in an unprecedented combination. This initiative will uncover the market capacities and capabilities and serve as an accelerated market research activity, while at the same time demonstrating the integration potential native to OGC Innovation Program activities.

This Pilot is an opportunity to test end-to-end information flow related to all phases of disaster management, with an emphasis on first responders and other end users. The Pilot focuses on four essential elements:

• Scalable exploitation of earth observation data on hybrid cloud platforms using application to the data technologies
• Visualization of the right information at the right time using GeoPackage data containers and GeoPackage viewers;
• Generation of GeoPackage offline containers to allow taking all relevant information into the field.
• Capability for “structured data” to enable web search engines to push disaster-relevant information up in search results during an ongoing disaster.

This work will support a vision of disaster response in which disaster relief forces access data from multiple sources that can be integrated and analyzed quickly. Hybrid, interoperable cloud platforms provide quickly scalable capacity to process vast streams of data and apply artificial intelligence predictive and simulation models to distill the relevant information. This information is then presented to end users, such as first responders in the field, in a directly consumable and actionable way. First responders and other field personnel especially need optimized information products and often experience connectivity issues. The right information needs to be presented at the right time in the right way – even offline. The Pilot will focus on using GeoPackage data containers and GeoPackage viewers, as well as the generation of GeoPackage offline containers to allow taking all relevant information into the field.

The Pilot will emphasize a disaster scenario involving pandemics and flooding / landslides, as well as other circumstances that complicate or cascade from such events.

Schedule for major milestones of the Pilot. Contact Josh Lieberman for further information.