How the American Red Cross Uses GIS Technology
By Stuart Thornton
Monday, November 1, 2010
When Hurricane Ike slammed into the north end of Galveston Island, Texas, on Sept. 13, 2008,
thousands of residents were displaced from their homes. An estimated 2.6 million people in Texas and
Louisiana lost electrical power. Luckily, the American Red Cross was ready for the storm, which made
landfall with 177 kilometer-per-hour (110 mile-per-hour) winds, due in no small part to the emergency
response organization’s use of GIS technology.
Greg Tune, the lead program manager of the geospatial technology department at the American Red
Cross, says GIS has allowed the Red Cross to make more informed decisions. A geographic information
system (GIS), uses an integrated network of hardware, software, and data. “GIS allows the user to add
information in the form of different layers to visualize what has happened or what you are trying to
depict in the form of a geographic picture,” Tune says.
For the American Red Cross, which has provided relief for those affected by disasters since its
formation in 1881 that means adding vital data to maps. This data includes the path of a hurricane and
the boundaries of various Red Cross chapters. Boundaries let the Red Cross know what chapters should
receive emergency supplies and funds. GIS also allows the organization to highlight the locations of
roads and natural features, including rivers and mountains.
Before Hurricane Ike hit the Texas coast, Tune and Jim Dooley, the American Red Cross’ senior
associate for geospatial technology, were following the storm with the help of GIS technology from
their offices at the American Red Cross headquarters in Washington, D.C. “By being able to track the
storm and monitor it, it helps from the planning standpoint,” Tune says. “The first thing that we are
doing is we are generating these maps of the path of the storm.”
Using GIS, the Red Cross was able to determine the best area in Texas to send resources, including
6,472 Red Cross workers. “We want to get things in the right area at the right time without being in
harm’s way,” Tune says.
GIS technology gave the organization the ability to make an informed decision on where to place their
Hurricane Ike disaster relief operation headquarters by allowing Red Cross workers to view data on the
track of the storm and compare it to the state’s highway system and the infrastructures of Texas’
major cities.
Though Houston was only an hour northwest of where the storm was predicted to make landfall, a power
outage in the city, along with a flood of displaced Galveston residents, combined to make it a poor choice
for the disaster relief operation headquarters. “Dallas kind of percolated to the top as the best likely
place to stage and pre-position stuff,” Tune says.
After the decision was made to place the disaster relief operation headquarters in Dallas, the Red Cross
sent trained workers to the city to talk with families about their disaster-related needs. The
organization also stationed 26 emergency response vehicles filled with snacks and water in Dallas before
Hurricane Ike made landfall.
Once the storm barreled into Texas, the Red Cross used wind-profile maps, generated by GIS
technology, to predict where Hurricane Ike would inflict the most damage. Tune says that the northeast
section of a storm is usually where the strongest winds are located. “What the wind profile and those
types of maps help us do is to start to pinpoint areas that we might look at doing mobile-feeding [an
emergency response vehicle (ERV) distributing food and water], where we might send our damage
assessment teams in,” Tune says. “Because, if you got limited resources, you don’t want to be going willynilly. You want to try and have a good plan.”
During the Hurricane Ike disaster response, Tune and Dooley were uploading their GIS maps on internal
Red Cross websites and sending reams of maps to Red Cross workers on the ground in Texas via FedEx.
“It got to the point where we weren’t even keeping track of the numbers we were sending out, literally
hundreds of large format [maps],” Tune says. “We were sending them down by the pound. I can’t tell you
how many rolls of 100-foot paper we went through, but it was dozens.”
American Red Cross had been using GIS for over a decade before the Hurricane Ike disaster response.
Tune says the first time the American Red Cross utilized the technology on a large scale was during
Northern California floods of late 1996 and early 1997. “We had flood after flood after flood in parts of
Northern California,” he says. “We generated boatloads of maps.”
Since then, the American Red Cross has employed GIS in all of their major disaster relief efforts,
including Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Hurricane Gustav in 2008, and the 2009 North Dakota floods.
Tune says GIS technology’s greatest contribution to the Red Cross’ disaster relief efforts is that it
allows the organization’s policymakers to view information clearly and therefore make more informed
decisions.
“I think it is visualization,” he says. “It’s the old ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ When people see
words on a piece of paper, it’s hard for them to understand what that means. I think that when you can
show it graphically in the form of a map, it really stands out.”
Reading Questions:
Answer these questions in complete sentences on your own sheet of paper.
1.
2.
3.
4.
What is GIS?
What kinds of information did the Red Cross keep track of using GIS?
How is GIS different then maps?
Why would the Red Cross need to use both GIS and paper Maps?