GIS in Action 2021

School Emergency Responder Preparedness Project
Miranda Wood and Paul Cone
School safety is on many parents' minds these days. Lockout and lockdown drills now start in kindergarten. While events in schools that require a major emergency response are infrequent, the need for rapid and coordinated responses across multiple first responder agencies in a critical event is essential.
Prior to the launch of this project, availability and consistency of school contact information and floor plans in Portland for emergency response were not synchronized across public safety agencies. Some information was gathered and stored but only Police had access to it - 911 Dispatchers and Fire did not.
The Portland Police Bureau was tasked with developing critical incident plans and collecting floor plans for school sites in the city, however, the value in making this information available to all emergency responders and dispatchers was also explored. This project brought together school, public safety, and mapping technology partners to improve information sharing. Data for the plans was prepared using ArcGIS Pro. Python scripting was used to join the maps for the critical incident plans with the corresponding school floor plan as a single PDF file in preparation for loading into the 911 computer system. PDFs are linked to the school points in the dispatch map using the pop-ups on feature layers, leveraging existing functionality for the new information and map product. 

Promoting Resiliency & Equity in Oregon:  The Oregon Geographic Information Council (OGIC)
Molly Earle and Cy Smith
The Oregon Geographic Information Council (OGIC) is proposing a budget request to the 2021 Legislature to develop a secure data sharing portal, called GEOHub. The need to provide a secure means for government organizations to share data was envisioned by the Legislature in statute enacted in 2017. The use of the new GEOHub portal will be tested with three projects in the upcoming biennium: Wildfire Mitigation, Workforce Partnerships, and Elections Administration. Ultimately, the portal will support all government services and enable a more resilient and consistent provision of services in every corner of the state. The presentation will describe the proposed portal and its potential to improve services related to wildfire, workforce, and elections. It will also speak to other critical uses of the new data sharing portal, such as improving the lives of foster children by helping to provide them a more consistent and stable situation.

Practical Use of U.S. Census 2020 & American Community Survey Race/Ethnicity Data to Support Public School Districts and Redistricting Efforts
Alex Brasch
With fewer than ten questions and the goal of simply counting each person in the U.S., the Census might sound mundane, but it is vitally important. The Census helps to determine how billions of dollars in federal funding are allocated to states and communities each year, and also impacts our representation by determining how many seats in Congress each state receives. Not to be outdone, the American Community Survey (ACS) serves as the foremost source of information on the changing social and economic characteristics of the U.S. population, including housing, education, jobs, and racial/ethnic diversity. This presentation will include a brief overview of the 2020 Census and ACS, a primer on data retrieval and wrangling methods, and examples of how geospatial data analysts, governing bodies, and local organizations can leverage these premier sources of demographic data. Of particular focus will be the incorporation of race/ethnicity and socioeconomic attributes to better recognize the diversity of places during geospatial analysis and to create data visualizations that support equity and social justice initiatives. Public K-12 school districts and County redistricting efforts will serve as case studies to highlight some of the innovative tools and techniques used by geospatial data professionals (e.g., Esri ArcGIS, Alteryx, Tableau, and R) to obtain, prepare, and visualize Census & ACS data.

A Spatial Identification Of Urban Agriculture With An Object Based Remote Sensing Approach In Portland, Oregon  
Elise Mazur
There are currently only manual methods for mapping urban agriculture (UA), which makes it difficult to analyze their patterns at a large scale. Many low-income neighborhoods rely on UA for food security, but researchers are beginning to question their success in creating food security because of their potential contribution to gentrification. It is thought that gardens may catalyze rising prices in their neighborhood and lead to the displacement of those who rely on them for food. Correlating UA with gentrification has been possible in a few cities where databases of gardens exist, but many cities do not have such databases. This research aims to create an algorithm for classifying UA with aerial imagery in Portland, Oregon. High spatial resolution imagery is spatially segmented and then classified to conduct an object based image analysis in Google Earth Engine. Once gardens are mapped, it is possible to study their distribution and density over time and correlate these metrics with changing demographics and property values. This method of mapping UA can be scaled up to other cities and used in spatial analyses to understand the dynamics with and potential contribution to gentrification in previously low-income neighborhoods.  

GIS Analysis of Volunteered Homeless Campsite Reports in Portland, Oregon
Krystle Harrell
Homelessness is a complex social issue that is affecting many urban areas in the United States. A robust understanding of how and where the homeless population survives is essential for developing effective means of engaging with and supporting this dynamic and varied population. Through this research we examine the spatial patterns of homeless campsites and their relationship with urban features in the form of zoning, transit stops, and support services for the homeless in Portland, Oregon. Based on a large, multi-year dataset of citizen-volunteered reports of homeless campsites, we employ a combination of spatial analysis, statistical methods, and digital mapping to elucidate prevailing spatial patterns and relationships. Our findings indicate significant concentrations of homeless campsites and significant spatial proximity relationships between reported homeless campsite locations, zoning, transit stops, and homeless support structures.

GIS in Hospital and Healthcare Emergency Management 
Umme Laiba Raha
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is being used in healthcare emergencies such as in the time of epidemics because of their capability of surveilling disease. GIS is a significant intelligence source for the information which is needed to make decisions by emergency managers but still has remained underutilized despite having these abilities. At the early phase of an emergency, GIS identifies the major areas that are needed to be managed. Studies revealed that the GIS system provides data for early identification of clusters of disease in a particular region or a hospital and processes spatial health data in cyclic order that includes the stages of (1) collection, preparation, and mapping of disease data, (2) identification of spatial disease patterns at a variety of scales, (3) application of objective statistical tests to consider whether the variation is significant or not. Epidemics and clusters of the disease have become a natural and problem in healthcare settings and therefore, in this time of technological advancement, GIS is enormously vital in handling sudden occurrences and emergencies.