Developing a Risk Assessment Database and Webmap with Bordering Communities

Leane Kmetz, MS, GISP
The City of Westfield
Westfield, IN

Each day communities respond to numerous local emergencies, however, there are some incidents that may require a collaborative approach that includes personnel from: multiple jurisdictions; a combination of specialties or disciplines; several levels of government; nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector. Using GIS and information from The National Incident Management System, or NIMS, provides the foundation needed to ensure that we can work together when our communities and the Nation need us the most. NIMS integrates best practices into a comprehensive, standardized framework that is flexible enough to be applicable across the full spectrum of potential incidents, regardless of cause, size, location, or complexity.

Two bordering communities (The City of Westfield and the City of Noblesville) were approached by their communities’ fire departments to create a map depicting the critical infrastructure according to FEMA’s NIMS (National Incident management System). They were each given a list consisting of the names and addresses of various locations around their cities that contained attributes of their risk type: Target Hazard, Life Safety, Infrastructure and Transportation. During a HagTag (Hamilton County Local Government GIS Technical Advisory Group) meeting, the two communities discovered that they were working on the same project. Noblesville and Westfield decided to combine their efforts into a single dataset and show their information together so emergency personnel can use and make decisions from all information available.