Socio-Economic Impact of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

I came across this report from Dun and Bradstreet (D&B) on the social-economic impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to the Gulf Coast states. Apart from the environmental disaster of the spill, this brief, two-page document describes the impact to employment, businesses and total sales volume. Some brief numbers:

• D&B found that 34% of the 7.3M businesses are located in the coastal counties in AL, LA, MS, TX, and the Gulf Coast of Florida.
• Of the 34.4M employees in the five Gulf States, nearly 36% are tied to businesses located in coastal counties.
• D&B found 37% ($1.951 Trillion) of the Total Sales Volume across all industries in the Gulf States occurs in coastal counties, with 8% ($148 Billion) tied to the coastal counties in Louisiana.

Podcast: Remote Sensing for Detecting Urban Growth and Open Space Loss: A Case Study from New Jersey

In this interview, Editor in chief Joe Francica speaks with Dr. Richard Lathrop, Director for the Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis at Rutgers University. Dr. Lathrop recently published a study on land use and land cover classification of the entire State of New Jersey entitled "Changing Landscapes in the Garden State: Urban Growth and Open Space Loss in NJ 1986 thru 2007."(pdf) Francica discusses some of the GIS and remote sensing technology applications used to produce this study. The podcast highlights the specifics about the GIS technology and techniques he used and the implications for New Jersey’s communities and legislature to act upon his findings for smart growth initiatives within the state.

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State of Florida’s Geospatial Team Working on Deepwater Horizon Response

Thanks to Richard Butgereit, the GIS Administrator for the Florida Department of Environmental Management, we have a review of Florida’s work to mitigate the impact of oil washing onto the Florida coastline.

Directions Magazine (DM): Who is helping the State of Florida in developing a geospatial data repository to help mitigate the oil spill?


Richard Butgereit, GIS Administrator, Florida DEM (FL):
The State of Florida uses geospatial data created by the responsible party and its contractors, federal agencies including the Coast Guard, NOAA, and EPA, and several state agencies for the Deepwater Horizon Response. Access to the data has been facilitated by Florida State Emergency Response Team (SERT) staff embedded in the Mobile Incident Command Post and the Florida Peninsula Command Post in Miami and other area and incident commands, as well as through NOAA’s ERMA and Office of Restoration and Response (ORR) FTP site, USGS Hazard Data Distribution System (HDDS), and data discovery through Virtual USA.



The SERT has been collecting geospatial data for boom verification, natural resources data, reconnaissance reports, geotagged photographs, and other data related to this response.  Adhering to the State of Florida’s strong public records law and open government standards, geospatial data created by the SERT has been provided via publicly accessible websites like GATOR, Incident Mapper and SERT Natural Resource Data Assessment.



Of particular note, the SERT has collected over 75,000 geotagged photos, totaling over 240 gigabytes of photos, as well as over 7,000 reconnaissance reports and made them available through GATOR, the Incident Mapper, as downloadable shapefiles, and via map services.



DM: Are you (i.e. Florida GIS) receiving or providing data from NGA? NOAA?

FL: Throughout the response, SERT has used imagery and derived products provided by NGA through HSIN and USGS HDDS FTP and REST services, and data from NOAA through ERMA and the ORR FTP site.



DM: Are any of these data going to BP and is BP funneling any data back to state agencies?



FL: Yes, as previously mentioned and adhering to the State of Florida’s strong public records law and open government standards, geospatial data created by the SERT for the Deepwater Horizon Response is available to partners in the response as well as to the public. In addition to the publically accessible web mapping sites mentioned above, the SERT makes data available via Keyhole Markup Language (KML) for globe viewers, REST map services for use with popular desktop GIS applications, as well as for direct download in numerous formats like GeoRSS, KML and zipped shapefile.  Our Deepwater Horizon Response GIS data resources page is available at http://www.floridadisaster.org/gis/dhr for more details on services and downloadable data.



DM: What other state agencies are requesting data from you in support of clean-up efforts?

FL: Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection is the lead agency for this response, working along with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Florida Division of Emergency Management. Along the way, numerous other state agencies including the Department of Health, Department of Transportation, Florida counties, Agency for Workforce Innovation, and Water Management Districts have also requested and/or produced data.

Alabama Works to Support Deepwater Horizon Clean up with Federal Agencies, BP

Recently I sent a request to the state GIS coordinators in the Gulf Coast region who are supporting efforts to clean up the oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. This report comes via Mike Vanhook, the GIS coordinator for Alabama on progress sharing data among the various agencies involved:

The US government and affected states have done a fantastic job sharing data. It has been an absolutely incredible response and a real shot in the arm for GIS. Data is being generated by a number of sources, including all levels of government, academic institutions, and commercial remote sensing,  and is well-coordinated among responders. Most all of the data that is readily available is relative to the location of the oil spill, booms, or impact. Remote sensing datasets were the first resources that were highly available collecting imagery of the coast and oil spill. NOAA, for example, flew all of the coastline and made it available as public data only a day or two after collection and has continued to provide oil spill and coastal data sources. The data is then aggregated and distributed by the HDDS (USGS, Hazard Data Distribution System), HSIN (Homeland Security Information Network), or NGA.  Feature data has not been as common and has been distributed through a variety of methods and data types, also up through HDDS, HSIN, and NGA.

In Alabama we are working with The Response Group (TRG), who was contracted by BP to coordinate GIS/data services. We coordinated the development of a mobile boom application utility with ESRI and TRG that uses ArcGIS 10 technology to collect boom data via GPS and Marine Police. Alabama is hosting the application on an ArcGIS 10 Server instance. The data is collected by GPS on Panasonic Toughbooks with built in GPS receivers, and synchronized by cellular air card through the internet back to the database at TRG.  Alabama is consuming the data service as a ArcGIS Server Map Service into a viewer for State agencies.

It is important to understand that I am not directly involved with the State’s response. I am, however, providing geospatial services and support to the lead agencies, ADEM and AEMA, in their response.

In regards to your specific questions I have provided the following responses:

• Who is helping the State of Alabama in developing a geospatial data repository to help mitigate the oil spill?
• As mentioned above we are coordinating with BP and the UCP (Unified Command Post) to collect boom data, we also receive general updates on the plethora of data sources available from the response community. Alabama in general has taken responsibility for its response and is using the best available data and coordinating among agencies. I maintain a daily email updating state agencies on oil spill data and services that I am aware of through observation and involvement in the oil spill response.
• Are you (i.e. Alabama GIS) getting data from NGA? NOAA?
• Yes – everyone in the response community has access to NOAA data and other sources that are consumed by NGA.
• Are any of these data going to BP and is BP funneling any data back to state agencies?
• Yes – to my knowledge information is being passed back and forth between agencies trough distribution of services and shared content. In general the geospatial data and services have been open among the response community and some data has carried a FOUO designation. Where possible, it seems data that can be public and does not have licensing restrictions is public.

Specifically regarding NOAA they are generating a number of the feature data sources and remote sensing data, they are well connected to the response community and have aggregated the available data from the community into the Geospatial Platform viewer. Most of the data is generally available in the response community and similar such applications are now starting to be visualized, including BP’s own version, as the data and sources are maturing. At first there was a furious response to get any data possible on scene. Now there is some normalcy to spatial operations and reliable connections can be made to data sources and services generated from the application of data.

Michael A. Vanhook
GIS Coordinator
Information Services Division (ISD) - Geospatial Office
Alabama Department of Finance

NOAA, NCAR Release Animated Model for Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

NOAA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) have released this animated model of how the oil slick from the Deepwater Horizon well will travel along the coastal waters of both the Gulf of Mexico and the potential impact along the eastern seaboard of the U.S.

- Dan’s Wild Science Journal