Module 5 - Hazards: Damage Assessment

    This week, in the fifth Applications in GIS lab, was about Hazards with concerns for Damage Assessment.

    In this lab, we expanded more on what we did previously in the last lab, by analyzing hurricane paths, hurricane citizen survey, and also more hurricane Sandy's impact on New Jersey analysis. The first part of the lab had us map out the hurricane path that sandy took, with some refreshers on how to map it cartography-ly correctly. This was then followed up with us making a survey that could be emulated for people to respond to when a hurricane has affected them. Which then brings us to the last part of the lab, which we will focus more on as this is what was primary worked on in the lab.

    Before we even got to the damage assessment part of the lab we first made raster mosaics with jpeg files in order to have pre and post imagery into ArcGIS. This was done by adding the jpeg files into the raster mosaics and ensuring the data loaded correctly.

    As you can see in the screenshot presented below, we inspected the parcels of land in the orange study area and indicated if the building had, no damage, affected, minor damage, major damage, or destroyed. This was done using a tool called swipe in ArcGIS that when used could view the differences with the post layer and pre layer. So once all the points were placed on the parcels, sporadically as they may seem, we then analyzed each point. There may have been a better way to do it but I went point by point and compared the post layer to the pre layer to asses the damage. Once completed it was simple to get and change the symbology needed to show the gradual structure damage. 

    The results we arrived on after adding a coastline line feature class and assessing the distance from the shoreline with concerns to structure damage gave us an obvious trend. Though my points may be sporadically placed, we can see that the closer a structure was to the shore, the more it became destroyed. The opposite is also true, with the farther from the coast the structure was, the more it became affected or had no damage. As can obviously be seen above, the structures on the right side of the study area are destroyed while the left side has no damage structures.

    Overall another great lab in applying what was previously learned in ArcGIS with more concerns to damage assessment. If anything, I would hope that this application is similar to what is done in response to hurricanes.