Emergency Management Shelter Data Solution Using ArcGIS and SharePoint

[#1]

Shelter management plays an important role in the event of emergency, such as hurricane. Knowing the real-time status of the shelters is critical to the Emergency Operation Center staff to make decision determining when it may be necessary to open additional shelters. Visualizing the shelters on the map can greatly enhance staffs ability to see the real-time overall status of shelters.

Our shelter data for the purpose of an active event is maintained in an Emergency Management application developed using SharePoint technology. In SharePoint there is not an out of the box mapping function. Esri did release Esri Maps for SharePoint, which added mapping functions to SharePoint. However, the mapping functions are limited and do not meet the requirements of our Emergency Management application for shelter data. Developing a focused GIS application that is the fast and simple was the task given to the SharePoint and GIS developers.

Traditionally, a task like this would have resulted in a multi-step solution using static data that started with an export of shelter data to a CSV file, converting it to GIS data, creating a MXD file that would be published to a map service. Finally, a GIS web application would be developed to consume the map service published.

Since SharePoint provides a Web Services API which can be used to access data, our solution was developed by using JavaScript and ArcGIS API for JavaScript. The JavaScript code blocks are used to read data from the SharePoint site. Then the data is fed to ArcGIS API for JavaScript code blocks to generate maps and display operation status information of the shelters. The workflow is straightforward and does not involve generating intermediate files, such as CSV or GIS data files.  And it solves the business need to provide a real-time view of important shelter data to emergency management operations staff and assists with decisions that potentially are saving lives.