The Pennsylvania Topographic & Geologic Survey

EMS Environment Institute Phone 814-863-0049 Compiled by: Penn State University 2217 EES Building Fax 814-865-3191 University park, PA 16802 Email [email protected]

Geographic Preparedness Exercise: Report and Recommendations

Draft -- 12/13/01

Sponsored By:

. The Pennsylvania Topographic & Geologic Survey . The Pennsylvania State University, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences Environment Institute . Pennsylvania Mapping and Geographic Information Consortium . Health-Environment Alliance

NOVEMBER 19, 2001 FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, PENNSYLVANIA

Geographic Preparedness Exercise: Report and Recommendations

Executive Summary

There purpose of the Geographic Preparedness Exercise was to examine the organizational relationship between business, local, federal, and state elements of the geographic community during a simulated biological weapons attack. The goals included (1) acquiring information to design and conduct a comprehensive simulation at a later date, (2) a better understanding of geographic data sources and flows within the Commonwealth of PA and the region as it relates to this scenario, (3) a better understanding of essential data themes, and (4) an understand the limitations of the geographic extent of available data. The exercise was based upon the Dark Winter that was an exercise originally designed to highlight the challenges that federal and state leaders would face during a major attack on the American homeland. There were twenty-seven exercise participants from the federal government, state government, Pennsylvania Legislature, county government, and academia. The lessons included the (1) importance of practicing to operate in a crisis environment and (2) systematic problems of how the geographic community operates and is organized. It is recommended that a follow-on exercise be planned, organized, and conducted to test the implications of the following possible fixes to the identified problems:  The production, distribution, and use of a uniform statewide 1:2,400 scale mapping database  Business support and cooperative financing of data development  A Pennsylvania Geographic Data Partnership and Coordination Office (GDPCO) Exercise Purpose

To examine the organizational relationship between businesses, local, federal, and state elements of the geographic community during a simulated biological weapons attack.

Issues Explored

1. How Pennsylvania and regional geographic community responds to a biological attack.

2. What roles of the local, state, federal, and business geographic communities assume during such an attack. 3. The next step to be taken to prepare for this or a similar event.

1. Information to design and conduct a comprehensive simulation at a later date. 2. A better understanding of geographic data source and flows within the Commonwealth of PA and the region. 3. A better understanding of essential data themes. 4. An understanding of the limitations of the geographic extent of available datasets.

Dark Winter Scenerio

Dark Winter is an exercise originally designed to highlight the challenges that Federal and state governments would face during a major attack on the American homeland. Several scenarios were examined, but the exercise developers, the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security and the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies, decided that a bioattack during an international crisis and overseas military deployment would best demonstrate the deficiencies and fault lines. Many homeland defense/security exercises focus on consequence management. Dark Winter creates a situation where leaders must face the challenges of crisis management, consequence management and response in parallel, not sequence. While not the specific intent, Dark Winter has geospatial information needs woven throughout the scenario.

According to testimony for the House of Representatives hearing, Combating Terrorism: Federal Response to a Biological Weapons Attack, July 23, 2001. Dark Winter highlighted complex issues, requiring new collaborations and creative solutions if decision-makers are to react properly to a biological weapons attack on the United States. Specifically, according to this testimony, during the exercise, players are hampered by a lack of information. There was a problem with situational awareness or what was happening at the state and local level, and what capabilities were on hand to deal with the situation. The senior officials made decisions that were impractical or too late, such as trying to close the border down between states after the infection had already spread. It should be noted that the concept of “place” was key to all decisions and, more frequently than not, the lack of a spatial context lead to poor decisions and actions.

2 Paralleling problems in the geographic community, coordination among bureaucracies is a continual problem. Coordination becomes more difficult when local and state bureaucracies interact with federal agencies. During Dark Winter it was clear that the spread of disease could not be contained by use of a very limited supply of vaccine and other measures, such as designated isolation and quarantine areas were needed. Closer coordination and cooperation between federal, state, and local officials, and a better information available to federal and state officials of what was occurring in the counties may have helped the response.

Agenda and Participants

The agenda proceeded through the scenario in phases paralleling the play of the June 2000, Dark Winter exercise. The exercise agenda for the Preparedness Exercise is provided at Appendix A.

There were twenty-seven exercise participants including individuals from federal government (1 individual), state government (10 individuals), state legislature (2 individuals), county government (5 individuals), academia (5 individuals), and business (5 individuals). A list of exercise participants is provided at Appendix B.

Observations Resulting from the Exercise’s Play

The exchange of geospatial data was recorded and is provided in a table at Appendix C. Redundancies in usage were not been removed. A summary of this exchange is:

User r

e Federal State Local Business NGO Total d i

Federalv 3 1 4 o Stater 1 10 11 P Local 7 4 11 Business 1 4 4 1 1 11 NGO 3 3

Total 5 25 8 1 1 40

The results illustrate the approximate usage and flow of information between participants. State government was the largest user (25 datasets). The heaviest flows occurred between state entities (10 datasets) and from local government to state (7 datasets). An unanticipated finding was that business, local government, and state government provided an equal quantity of datasets.

Positional Accuracy Needs 40 Feet 26

3 4 Feet 13 1 Feet 1 The desired positional accuracy was 40 feet or better. This reflected the perceived need to have a database that related data to individual addresses and building locations. Resolution Needs Building 32 Parcel 1 1 Meter 1 Participants overwhelmingly wanted to be capable of identifying individual structures (addresses) for purposes such as delineating quarantine areas and delivering emergency services. Data Update Frequency Needs Continuous 8 Hourly 1 Daily 16 Weekly 1 Monthly 1 Not Required 13 Update was desired on a daily of better basis for the broad categories of data as incident locations, operational areas (quarantine) areas, and support facilities. Importance of the Data Essential 32 Important 8 Secondary 0 Requests for external geographic support were recorded. A summary is provided below. Business servers as a reservoir of surge capability to meet unique and unanticipated needs. Service User Provider Urgency Format Visualization State State Important H Query and Analysis Federal NGO Essential D/H Visualization Federal NGO Essential D/H Data Management State Business Essential D/H Data Manipulation Federal Business Essential D Data Management Federal Business Essential D Spatial Data Query and Analysis Federal Business Essential D Data Manipulation State Business Essential D H=Hardcopy, D=Digital

The participants identified the following strengths:  There are established points of service  Significant technical expertise within the group

4  There is a good base of data  Strong expertise and financial capabilities with in business  There is an established distribution system The strengths were by and large “informal” in nature. That is to say, personal knowledge and relationships were key. The participants identified the following weaknesses:  Weak inter-organizational linkages  Turf protectiveness and political battles caused by a lack of coordination  Political, legal, and organizational restrictions to adequate data access  An obfuscation of the responsibility for leadership in the coordination of geographic community’s resources and joint-opportunities  Lack of an integrated highly detailed data of known quality  Not fully leveraging businesses technical expertise and financial opportunities The weaknesses were largely systemic and problems affected the entire geographic community as interrelated groups and channels that collect, distribute, and process of information to decision makers. The participants identified the following opportunities:  Improved data exchange and cooperation can be achieved at little additional or no cost  There is time to improve coordination and make system changes  We have the capabilities to better educate the community and users The opportunities related to an improved organization by synchronizing the individual parts of the GIS community to deliver increased capabilities.

Analysis

The exercise suggests that the major weakness and opportunity are organizational. The weaknesses might be considered in two tiers. The first tier of needs involves how the geographic community operates at a professional level in a crisis environment. These needs tend to focus on education. The second level of needs focuses on problems of how the geographic community is structured to operate between organizational entities. These problems are largely systemic. The needs are summarized as follows:

5 Tier 1: Professional The “practiced” flow of information was essential. County GIS organizations are better prepared to handle to flow of GIS information than their federal and state counterparts; county government uses the same people to “fight terrorism” as in their day-to-day operations. Specifically, their GIS infrastructures have been formalized and operationalized since county government has the responsibility for property parcel management, infrastructure management, and 911 (public safety). It must be noted that this only applies to some regions such as SEDA-COG and the PA GIS Consortium regions where GIS programs exist. Professional expertise was essential. Those best qualified to assess how geographic information is to be stored, processed, and analyzed are the geospatial professionals in business and government that have experience with the process of providing geographic support. In planning how to respond to any terrorist attack with geographic information, decision makers should rely on the geospatial professionals in government, business, and academia, and not make decisions addressing systemic issues that impact on the use or deployment of geographic resources from the level where those experts cannot be heard. It appears essential that the community operates during non-crisis periods like it would operate during a crisis. Tier 2: Systemic Coordination and teamwork among and between geographic communities was essential. Agencies from various levels and jurisdictions, which had not traditionally collaborated in the GIS realm, were required to interact. There were conflicts. The one central problem which emerged was that of the lack of common database standards, procedures, and availability. From the first response, many different data formats, accuracies, information contents, and policies created conflicting views to what information should be the basis of vital decisions, the source, and the validity of results based on a certain source. Business is a critical participant. Business is a means to meet the surge need for unique data and geospatial processing capabilities. This reflects the actuality that many of the major GIS business in the US have Homeland Defense initiatives in progress. There is a general feeling that the capabilities and functions of business in this environment is not fully appreciated or understood. The geographic information needs were at a scale of “local” needs. The responders were local and, therefore, the geographic information decisions were at a scale and detail of streets, buildings,

6 and parcels. At the local level, the data resolutions supported facilities management and other services that are related to individual parcels and buildings. At the state level, users are generally more interested in working at the county level. While state officials were the first to use GIS, local government were the ones with the detailed geographic information that related to such events as quarantine areas and the routing of emergency material. The federal and state governments did not maintain geographic data of adequate detail and information content to develop the same decision products and appreciate a similar view of the situation. Current data was the expectation. Decision makers expected the latest and best data. There is a structural inconsistency. The most current data is from those in the immediate “zone” to the event, however the current organizational structure is not organized to obtain and manage such information. There was an urge to only use the data sets with a statewide spatial extent. Due to the lack of standardized county-developed data across the Commonwealth, there is a tendency to use the single data sets with statewide extents whether it was the right data for the task or not. It was felt that some data is better than multiple data that were not seamless. However, GIS results must be treated differently from other types of data. Because the positional accuracy, detail, and content of GIS data sets varies dramatically, there is a possibility that the identified relationships within and among features can result from the data collection scheme as much as from the true nature of the phenomena being investigated. Factors that must be considered by the decision maker using GIS are the optimal mix of spatial scale, spatial data density, positional accuracy, extent, and incomplete data. Without reasonable understanding of the implications, the usefulness of the geographic information products is in question.

Recommendations

While valuable experience can be gained by conducting another exercise of the existing organizational structure, such an approach helps primarily to solve issues at the professional level and leaves unaddressed the systemic problems. A test of possible alternatives to the current organizational structure would be helpful. It is recommended that a simulation be planned, organized, and conducted to specifically test the implications of the following:

The uniform production and use of 1:2,400 scale mapping across the entire State. For a variety of reasons, a uniform product is easier to manage than multiple scale products. This scale of mapping is clearly the choice of county agencies and while it is not ideal for municipal governments, it would

7 provide a reasonable product for those areas that have not yet invested in the extremely large scale products they desire. This recommendation is for the “Framework Layers,” which include property maps, transportation features, political boundaries, water features, geodetic control, elevation and ortho imagery. This program would build a “solid foundation” for all future mapping efforts in Pennsylvania. It is not feasible, nor appropriate, to map all desired layers at 1:2,400 scale.

Partnering with business. Pennsylvania has world-class entrepreneurs and businesses in the field of GIS. This talent and capability should be exploited to meet the spatial data needs. This might be accomplished through an alliance of educators, investors, government, and industry. Such an approach might help to promote Pennsylvania’s high-tech economic growth with the intent of returning a portion of the “added value” to our county governments for map upkeep. Forms of this returned value could be, for example, a profit sharing arrangement, data, grants, or services. This must be achieved while honoring our citizen’s traditional right of free access to government map information.

The role of the National Guard. The lessons of this exercise are perhaps best stated by the testimony to the U.S. House of Representative’s Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs, and International Relations on July 18, 2001. “National Guard personnel have historically provided support to civil authorities after natural disasters, assisting in fighting fires or cleaning up after floods and storms, and helping with crowd control, evacuation, and supply management. The potential for Guard involvement after a biological weapons attack should not be underestimated.” The National Guard’s capabilities should be explored, enhanced where appropriate, and included.

A Pennsylvania Geographic Data Partnership and Coordination Office (GDPCO). Coordination of spatial data production and access in Pennsylvania requires varying levels of liaison activity with every municipality, county, state and federal agencies. In addition, all utility companies operating in the state and many private sector businesses have a keen interest in spatial data production and are likely partners. This task would require a staff organic to government who are both experienced “networkers” inside and outside government and intimately geospatial experts. The primary function of the GDPCO would be building partnership arrangements between municipal, county, regional, state and federal agencies. It would also develop strategies allowing it to work with private sector businesses. Staying in contact with all these groups would allow the GDPCO to monitor opportunities and to match likely partners. This activity is extremely important, because the cost of spatial data production dramatically decreases on a per square mile basis (as much as 90%) as the production area becomes larger.

8 Appendix A Agenda

Time Event 10:00 - 10:30  Welcome

 Introduction of Participants

 Exercise Overview

 Organize

10:30 - 11:00  Segment 1: Briefing, discussion and definition of Geographic Information Data Needs

 Working Lunch

12:30 - 1:00  Source and Connectivity Activity 1:00 - 2:00  Discussion and Resolution

9 Appendix B Participant List

Name E-Mail Phone Organization Todd Bacastow [email protected] 814.863.0049 Penn State University Barry C. Hutchins [email protected] 570.433.4461 Lycoming County Public Safety Michael King [email protected] 717.787.8733 House of Representatives Sean Gimbel [email protected] 717.787.2079 House of Representatives Rod Brown [email protected] 814.355.8733 Centre Co. GIS Brett Weiser [email protected] 717.565.7522 Parsons Jim Boyd [email protected] 717.565.7510 Parsons Eric Conrad [email protected] 717.787.5027 DEP Lawrence A. Smith [email protected] 717.651.2044 Pema Roger Barlow [email protected] 703.648.5189 USGS-Natl. Mapping Program Kevin Fanning 570.893.4090 Clinton County DEM Jim Watson [email protected] 570.89 .4280 Clinton County GIS Dan Campbell [email protected] 412.201.7459 University of Pittsburgh Sherrill Davison [email protected] 610.444.4282 University of Pennsylvania Nan Hanshaw Roberts [email protected] 717.783.6897 PA Dept of Ag-Animal Health Paul A. DeBarry [email protected] 570.821.1994 x248 Borton-Lawson Engr. Ashis B. Pal [email protected] 717.399.7007 Advanced Technology Solutions Inc. Sam Berkheise [email protected] 717.783.7257 PA Geol. Survey Chris Pfeiffer [email protected] 814.865.8792 PASDA Jay Parrish [email protected] 717.787.2169 PA Geol. Survey John Pollack [email protected] 717.763.7212 x2930 GeoDecisions Doug Miller [email protected] 814.863.7207 Penn State University Bob Reeder [email protected] 717.861.2634 Dept of Military & Vet Affairs Philip A. Colvin [email protected] 717.664.1203 Lancaster Co. Emerg Mgmt Thomas J. Rayburn 610.384.7711 ext.3880 DVA Fred Wertz [email protected] 717.783.3577 PA Dept. Agric. Kevin Schreier [email protected] 717.783.9704 PA Dept. Agric.

10 Appendix C Record of Data Exchange Positional Data Theme Source User Accuracy Resolution Update Importance Causality Location Business NGO 40 Building Continuous Essential Employee Locations Business Business 40 Building Continuous Essential Utility Locations Business Local 40 Building Hourly Essential Air Transportation Facilities Business Local 40 Building Daily Important Rail Facilities Business Local 40 Building Daily Important Food Distribution Centers Business State 40 Building Continuous Essential Residential Heating Fuel Business State 40 Building Daily Essential Major Food Retail Centers Business Federal 40 Building Daily Essential Active Small Pox Cases State State 4 Building Continuous Essential Emergency Responders Local Local 4 Building Hourly Essential Hospitals Local Local 4 Building Not Required Essential Local Roads Local Local 4 Building Daily Important Mortuaries Local State 40 Building Weekly Essential Cemeteries Local State 40 Parcel Weekly Essential Water Treatment Facilities Local State 40 Building Not Required Important Public Water Supplies Local State 4 Building Not Required Important Non-Public Water Supplies Local State 4 Building Not Required Important Civil Authority Sites Local State 40 Building Daily Essential Public Buildings Local State 40 Building Daily Essential Parcels Local State 40 Parcel Not Required Important Quartine Areas Local State 4 Building Continuous Essential Care Providers Local Local 4 Building Monthly Essential Population Density Federal State 40 Building Not Required Important Medical Supplies Federal Federal 40 Building Hourly Essential Orthoimagery Federal Federal 40 1 meter Not Required Essential Addressed Streets Federal Federal 40 Building Not Required Essential Weather Conditions NGO State 1000 MCD Continuous Essential Red Cross Centers NGO State 40 Building Daily Essential Emergency Supplies NGO State 40 Building Daily Essential Infectious Waste Disposal Sites State State 40 Building Not Required Essential Political Jurisdictions State State 4 Building Not Required Essential Transportation Infrastructure State State 40 Building Daily Essential Road Conditions State State 4 Building Daily Essential Public Transportation Facilities State State 40 Building Not Required Important Medial Buildings State State 40 Building Continuous Essential Medial Buildings State Federal 40 Building Not Required Essential Crime Occurrences State State 40 Building Continuous Essential Public Facilities by Type State State 40 Building Not Required Essential Waste Disposal State State 40 Building Daily Essential Potential Disease Exposures State State 40 Building Continuous Essential