Overview The PhotoMappers project is in its ninth year of providing situational awareness to federal,…
Hurricane Isaias was the second hurricane of the 2020 Atlantic storm season. The National Alliance for Public Safety GIS Foundation (NAPSG) requested support from GISCorps volunteers for the long-standing Disaster Crowdsource Photos effort, to provide situational awarness to emergency managers. While the storm largely spared Florida, moving slowly up the coast, it made landfall near Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina on August 4. Moving north, it cause widespread wind damage and power outages in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. The images and locations captured by GISCorps volunteers even reflect the longest tracked tornado path (35.5 miles) in the state of Delaware.

Forty-nine volunteers joined the effort contributing more than 260 hours and 499 photos in 7 days. Thanks to all the volunteers that contributed: Alyssia Church, Austin Adkison, Benjamin Wheeler, Bo Fethe, Brad Fisher, Charles Page, Chiamaka Chimah, Christina Black, Claudia Pighetti, Dacey Zelman-Fahm, Elena Kraus, Ingrid Jourgensen , Jeremy Conner, Jessica Waddell, John Taylor, Johnathan Clementi, Jonathan Barnett, Josh Garver, Julius Moore, Katie Walker, Keith Johnson, Kelli Brock, Kenneth Hornfeldt, Kyle Palentino, Lara Ariori, Laura Akindo, Leah Pensler, Luke Potash, Mia Maschal, Michelle Hooper, Miguel Silva, Miranda Harvey, Misha Awad, Neetashree Surange, Paul Paddock, Rebecca Parsons, Robert Lewis, Robyn Tippins, Sarah Burns, Sarah McNair, Sean Dolan, Sean Lim, Sundas Rehman, Timothy Beck, Tricia Saulnier Littlejohn, Vickery Cleveland, Zach Lawlor, and Zachary Tunstall. This project was managed by Core Committee member Erin Arkison with assistance from Holly Torpey.
We are continually improving our instructions and refining the apps to reflect the feedback we recieve. Several improvents based on this activation included an improved Volunteer Dashboard to show not just approved volunteer posts, but pending posts waiting to be vetted, and also a list of removed posts with reason for removal (duplication, incorrect location, etc.). We hope going forward this ‘real-time’ feedback will help volunteers improve their skills as well as increasing the quality of the resulting information.
GISCorps expects to activate for all major weather disasters in 2020 using this platform. Explore all past disaster events NAPSG and GISCorps have partnered on using this Crowdsource-style platform embedded below or at this link.
Project Complete.
