M5: Damage Assessment

M5: Damage Assessment

Module 5 was a continuation of Module 4 but focused on Damage Assessment. 

It was quite the refresh on a number of skills and tools I have briefly used before; Display XY Data, Points to Lines, Creating Symbology, Adding Graticules, Preparing Rasters, Flicker and Swipe, Domains, and Creating Feature Classes.

Creating the Citizen Damage Report was technically new to me in ArcGIS Survey, but I create surveys on a frequent basis in Microsoft and Google Forms so I did not have a huge learning curve with that. 

For the Damage Assessment, I added the pre and post storm images of the area, created the domains, added the feature class, added the parcels, and study area. From there I used the pre storm images to add all the structure points and I went down the attribute table changing the values for each point after swiping between pre and post. 

Next, I created the coastline using the pre storm images, made a multiple ring buffer from the coastline, and manually counted the structures between the lines. If it was a larger dataset I would have used some combination of buffers, spatial joins, clipping, etc to determine the numbers. 

Total structures that were damaged is 86. Based on the way the streets looked - I am assuming all the buildings in the area had some type of damage from the initial inundation, be it water, sand, or debris. 

As of this writing, the area I live in is in the path of the cone of uncertainty for a Tropical Storm/Hurricane, making these last two modules a sudden correlation with real life. While I am native (of Florida and Emergency Response), I now have a deeper understanding of the flooding factors and post damage assessments. 

Which means I am also quickly trying to wrap up this course and get my life sorted in case we are hit or have to deploy to the area that is hit. 

Stay safe blog readers! Let me know if you need anything for Storm Season. I have resources!