PSU GEOG 488 Final Project Data Sources for Search & Rescue Mission Management Loren Pfau 16 December 2009 Introduction: For my GEOG 488 final project I elected to conduct an analysis of the geospatial data needs of the local Search and Rescue Team Alpine Rescue Team in Evergreen, CO of which I am a member. For this report I have summarized the existing data and data sources; explore other possibilities; and discuss recommendations and challenges in acquiring and using new, hopefully better, sources of data to employ in the mission management aspect of the Team s SAR operations. Background: The Alpine Rescue Team is an all-volunteer wilderness search and rescue team serving Clear Creek, Gilpin and Jefferson Counties in Colorado. All three counties lie to the west of the Denver metro area and see a high amount of backcountry recreation. The Team supports the Clear Creek, Gilpin and Jefferson Sherriff s Departments in situations in which a wilderness search, rescue or recovery is required. In an average year the Team conducts approximately 90 missions. Typically a third of the missions are in Clear Creek County; another third are in Jefferson County; and the remainder is in Gilpin or in assistance of teams in other counties within Colorado. The Team is a heavy user of geographic information (topographic maps, GPS, satellite and aerial photographs) for mission management and field teams. Traditionally the Team has relied on traditional paper maps and position information called in over radio, but has recently moved to using electronic mapping tools and Automatic Position Reporting System (APRS), a Ham radio technology that allows GPS coordinates to be sent over an amateur radio signal. A key constraint on any proposed approach will be cost. The Team is self-funded so any data that cannot be acquired inexpensively (ideally at no charge) is not a viable option for the Team. As the Team serves three separate County Sheriff s Departments one avenue to explore is the availability of data within the Counties GIS Departments. Project Workflow: The approach in developing the workflow was first to define possible data needs based on personal experience in Search and Rescue on the expertise of others involved with Search and Rescue in Colorado. Individuals interviewed:
- Paul Woodward, President, Alpine Rescue Team Paul has years of SAR experience throughout the US. I ve used him as a sounding board on what he views as must have data versus nice to have data for use in mission management. - Mike Doe, Communications Director, Alpine Rescue Team Mike did some of the original work for ART in selecting electronic mapping packages and had in the past downloaded raster data (topo s and DOQQ s) for use in one of the packages, Ozi Explorer. I inquired as to about his thoughts on pro s and con s of existing packages, his investigations of various data sources, and the possibility of moving mission management capabilities from the mapping packages to a true GIS system. - Roger Krautkremer, Communications Specialist, Alpine Rescue Team Roger is a Ham radio operator and Incident Management Team member and has done much of the work to integrate APRS technology into the mission management software as a means of automatically tracking field team positions. - I also made inquiries in to the Clear Creek County GIS office, the Jefferson County Open Space office, the Denver Council of Regional Governments to inquire as to what information that might be applicable to this project. Based upon these interviews and knowledge of the existing Team data the following data needs and characteristics were identified as desirable for Team purposes: Data needs o External Layers Topographic maps rasters Most basic form of map used in SAR activities Aerial photography and satellite photography rasters Useful augment to topo maps to visualize terrain Digital Elevation Models Slope calculations for technical systems decisions and avalanche danger County boundaries vectors Jurisdiction Governmental entity boundaries vectors (USFS, state/county parks) Jurisdiction Road vectors Site access Fire/ambulance districts vectors Supporting agencies o Alpine Information to create historical mission layers for planning and training purposes Historical ART mission data (presently all paper-based; would need to be created) Mission type Search, rescue, recovery Avalanche, lost person, technical rescue, body recovery, etc. Subject type
Hiker, skier, climber, hunter, etc. Date Location Data and Software availability/cost o Extremely limited budget for acquisition of data and software Needs to be freely available public sector data or data provided by servedcounty agencies Open source or donated/subsidized GIS software package Data accuracy o No need for extreme accuracy routes and waypoints will be coming from recreationalgrade handheld GPS units o Approximate boundary locations sufficient for SAR field work Primarily required for determining agency jurisdictions After the data requirements had been identified and analyzed the search began for sources of data that could potentially meet the Team s needs. Layers were collected or developed and organized into an ArcGIS project. Data Sources and Characteristics: For the purposes of this project I limited the data research and collection activities to Clear Creek County. Clear Creek is a sparsely populated county with a large percentage of the landmass is owned by the National Forest Service and Colorado state parks. Within its boundaries are four of Colorado s Fourteeners peaks that exceed 14,000 feet in altitude and the large Mount Evans Wilderness Area. The Team s largest number of annual missions typically occurs in Clear Creek. List of clearinghouses used: o The National Map Seamless Server (http://seamless.usgs.gov/index.php) Rasters of interest USGS topographic maps Digital Elevation Models Orthoimagery o Colorado Department of Transportation (http://www.dot.state.co.us/app_dtd_dataaccess/geodata/index.cfm?fuseaction=ge odatamain) County Data Set (Clear Creek County) Vectors (shapefiles) of interest Roads Cities
o o o o o o o Lakes Streams Routes Colorado Department of Local Affairs (http://www.dola.state.co.us/gis/politicalboundaries.html) DOLA Political Boundaries Vectors (shapefiles) of interest County boundaries Fire Districts Ambulance Districts Park and Recreation Districts Colorado Ownership Management and Protection (http://www.nrel.colostate.edu/projects/comap/google_earth.html) KML files of interest (public land boundaries) Federal Lands State Lands Local Lands USDA USFS Geodata Clearinghouse (http://svinetfc4.fs.fed.us/clearinghouse/index.html) Vector and Raster data on Arapaho National Forest National forest property boundaries Information on trails and fire roads Clear Creek County GIS (http://www.co.clearcreek.co.us/depts/mapping/ftp_agree.htm) Vector data of interest Open space parcels Subdivisions Roads Contours Slope Raster data of interest 10 meter DEM USGS NSDI Partnership Office (http://liaisons.usgs.gov/nsdi/datalibrary.html?datalibrarypath=nsdipartnershipoffice/ CO/ 2009 National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP) raster of Clear Creek County Alpine Rescue Team Historical mission logs for Clear Creek County To create layers depicting mission types and locations a personal geodatabase of 2007 missions was developed; subsequently individual layers for searches, rescues and recoveries were extracted from the geodatabase for presentation purposes Others: Investigated but either don t make GIS data available or charge for data extractions. Colorado State Parks GIS data not available Jefferson County Open Space JeffCo charges for GIS data Denver Mountain Parks Denver charges for GIS data
Denver Regional Council of Governments aerial imagery DRCOG charges for GIS data through its approved vendor Map Mart GeoEye and Digital Globe satellite imagery charges for GIS data InterMap for DEM s charges for GIS data Interest in the above is primarily park boundaries, road and trail systems within parks and open space lands in vector format and, current DEM s and aerial images in raster format. The bulk of the data used by the local and state government entities of interest for my project uses the North American Datum of 1983. The main exception is the use of the North American Datum of 1927 for search and rescue operations by the Team, which dates back to pre-gis/gps days and the use of USGS topo maps of the 1927 datum vintage. Also, the bulk of the data is in the UTM projection, though there are several sources that use geographic coordinates and one that uses the Colorado State Plane projection. Since the UTM projection is the standard for search and rescue operations the data frames in use will be in UTM format. The question then became which datum to use NAD27 or NAD83? While I personally believe that the SAR community needs to move to the use of NAD83, and while it runs counter to my instincts to convert the majority of the data from NAD83 to NAD27 because a minority of the data is in NAD27, the reality is it will take time to convince the community to make the change. As mission protocol calls for the use of NAD27 I used that as the datum for my project. Many of the government sources investigated make data available to the public for use, as to the private providers for a cost. And all appear to include disclaimers of warranty, limitations of liability, and warnings about accuracy and usability. Given that what was being developed was an initial set of data layers for SAR mission management I was not overly concerned about the issues around accuracy we re looking for general guidance on things like boundaries, trails, slope angles, and responsible agency districts, not survey-quality data quality. Data used to prepare a historical view of Clear Creek missions was managed such that the individuals that were the subjects of the missions cannot be identified. No names were placed into the geodatabase developed or in the individual shapefiles for rescues, recoveries and searches that were extracted from the geodatabase. The following series of screenshots depicts a selected assortment of layer views of geospatial information collected for this project.
Figure 1 DOLA Shapefile of Colorado County Borders, with Clear Creek County and Denver Highlighted
Figure 2 DRG Composite of USGS 1:24,000 Scale Topographic Maps Covering Clear Creek
Figure 3 NED Extract formed by Clipping Entire Data Set using the Clear Creek County Shapefile
Figure 4 Clear Creek County Hillshade Created from NED Extract
Figure 5 National Forest Service Lands Shapefile Clipped by Clear Creek County Boundary
Figure 6 Roads, Lakes Streams, Lakes and Cities from CDOT Shapefiles, Clipped by Clear Creek County Boundary
Figure 7 View of Fields in the Searches Layer Attribute Table (similar tables exist for Rescues and Recoveries) Figure 8-2009 NAIP Imagery Encompassing Clear Creek County
Figure 9 Screenshot of Multiple Layers Collected or Developed Challenges and Lessons Learned: The major challenge of this project turned out not to be the lack of data sources, but rather the amount of time spent in researching possible sources. With an increasing number of public and private entities placing information on the Internet it is relatively easy to identify potential sources but the bulk of the time goes into analyzing what exactly each source provides. The next challenge was budgetary. Some very new and potentially useful aerial photography and Digital Elevation Models covering Clear Creek County are available through commercial concerns. The imagery would be very useful in managing search operations as it would be possible to identify new trails, roads, and buildings that are not depicted on older vintage topographic maps or imagery. Similarly the DEMs that are available commercially are of higher resolution than those available from the National Elevation Dataset. These would be useful for aspect and slope evaluations.
But the commercial data is quite expensive to acquire and so could not be a part of the data collection effort. Finally there was the ongoing issue of data acquired from differing sources using differing datums, projections, formats, compression and widely-varying documentation via metadata. The focus of this course has been on locating data and dealing with inconsistencies and that was definitely reinforced during my data collection and analysis efforts. Key lessons learned: - Researching data sources is time-consuming and labor-intensive. The problem is not lack of data but rather the abundance of possible sources to be researched. - Because of data differences accuracy, vintage, etc. it is incumbent upon the project team to make judgment calls as to the usability of any particular data source in light of the needs of the end product to be delivered. - The lack of complete metadata is frustrating and a potential complication. Anyone developing geospatial data, whether for internal company or agency use or external distribution, should make an effort to provide complete metadata to enhance the usability and credibility of the data. - Data conversions were not as challenging as I d expected at the start of the course, primarily due to the tools available in FME and ArcGIS. - Anyone undertaking a project such as this needs a considerable amount of collaboration with the future end users in the requirements development phase of the project. Without time spent discussing the must-haves and nice-to-haves and setting some clear requirements one could collect or develop a huge database of geospatial layers that would seldom be used. Future Work: While this project was conducted primarily to satisfy the requirements of GEOG 488 it had a dual purpose of providing insight and guidance to the Alpine Rescue Team to help improve SAR mission management. A number of areas that remain to be researched: - Seeking County permission for access to the latest aerial imagery at no cost for Team use. - Inquiring of private commercial data vendors for access to data at reduced or no costs for Team use. - Acquiring or developing data depicting radio repeater coverage areas Ham, emergency services and private to assist in mission communications planning. - Use of KML files from the National Weather Services and personal weather stations to provide current and forecast weather conditions during missions. - Use of Colorado Department of Transportation XML feeds for real-time traffic and road conditions reporting for routing rescuers to missions. - Software to allow the direct import of APRS position information into GIS software.
References: Alpine Rescue Team (ART) (no date). 2007 Mission Log. Mission location information extracted from archival files in November 2009. Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) (no date). Political Boundaries. Retrieved on 11 October 2009 from: http://www.dola.colorado.gov/gis/politicalboundaries.html Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) (no date). Geographic Data. Retrieved on 11 October 2009 from: http://www.dot.state.co.us/app_dtd_dataaccess/geodata/index.cfm?fuseaction=geodatamain&men utype=geodata Intermap Technologies. 2009. Data pricing information retrieved on 5 November 2009 from: http://intermap.com/products MapMart. 2009. Data pricing information retrieved on 5 November2009 from: http://www.mapmart.com/ National Forest Service(NFS) (no date). GIS Coverages of National Forest System Boundary data for the the lower 48 states. Retrieved on 11 November 2009 from: http://roadless.fs.fed.us/documents/feis/data/gis/coverages/index.shtml USDA (no date). USDA Geospatial Data Gateway. Retrieved at various times in October 2009 from: http://datagateway.nrcs.usda.gov/ USDA (no date). National Elevation Dataset. Retrieved on 19 October 2009 from: http://ned.usgs.gov/ USGS NSDI Partnership Office (no date). 2009 National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP) raster of Clear Creek County. Retrieved on 16 November 2009 from http://liaisons.usgs.gov/nsdi/datalibrary.html?datalibrarypath=nsdipartnershipoffice/co/ List of GIS Data Formats Raster Data: USDA Orthophoto Mosaic for Clear Creek County, CO. UTM, NAD83. 1999 2001 time period. 1-meter resolution. MrSID compression. USGS National Elevation Dataset Digital Elevation Model. GCS, NAD83. 10-meter resolution. MrSID compression.
USGS Digital Raster Graphic mosaic of topographic maps. UTM, NAD83. MrSID compression. GeoTIFF format. USGS 2009 National Agricultural Imagery Program aerial photos. UTM, NAD83. MrSID compression. Vector Data: Alpine Rescue Team historical mission log. Search/rescue/recovery location coordinates. UTM, NAD27. Colorado Department of Transportation. ESRI Shapefiles (roads, airports, lakes, streams, routes). UTM, NAD83. Colorado Department of Local Governments. ESRI Shapefiles (county boundaries, fire districts). UTM, NAD83. Zipped file compression. Clear Creek County, CO GIS Department. ESRI Shapefiles (city boundaries, local roads). StatePlane- Colorado-Central, NAD83. Zipped file compression. This document is published in fulfillment of an assignment by a student enrolled in an educational offering of The Pennsylvania State University. The student, named above, retains all rights to the document and responsibility for its accuracy and originality.