Where are all the Gas Stations?

1. Where are all the Gas Stations? 2008 Hurricane Season Lessons Learned Workshop Louisiana’s Geospatial Response to Hurricanes Gustav and Ike January 29, 2009 State Library of Louisiana

2. Hurricane Gustav • Nearly 2 million people evacuated from south Louisiana in the days before Gustav • 34parishes were declared disaster areas on September 2 • 48 deaths in the state of Louisiana • 1.5 million people were without power in Louisiana on September 1

3. Louisiana EOC needs Information on the Availability of Fuel for the Public • Citizens enter open gas stations addresses into La.gov website • La DNR is using internet to cold call gas stations • Hampton Peele believes there is an official source for gas stations • LA DNR states LA Agriculture and Forestry’s Weights and Measures have official list • Weights and Measures have such list in their main building, but have no power • Eventually list is obtained • Hampton Peele calls Josh Kent and asks who is the best source to geocode gas stations • LA DOTD is tasked to geocode ~ 3400 gas stations on September 4 for a meeting on the 5th

4. La Ag and Forestry Database

5. What is Geocoding? • Finding a geographic location for a given address • Requires addresses in a standard format with two fields: 1. Number, Name, Type (123 | Main | St.) 2. A 5–digit Zip Code • Requires a street center line GIS database with specific geocoding fields • Requires software that reads the addresses and associates them with the GIS data

6. How does a Address Locator Work? • Identify the street and zip code in the GIS database • Identify the segment that contains the address number • Determine on what side of the street the address number belongs (odd or even) • Interpolate the numeric address along the line • Create a new point feature in a GIS database

7. Factors AffectingGeocoding Accuracy • Addresses Spelling variance and errors Multiple names (Florida Bl/ US 190) Zip code errors New Streets/ addresses 2. GIS Data Currency of database Location of street center lines Does database support multiple names A Geocoding “Hit” Does Not Mean a Correct Location!

8. Finding Unmatched Addresses There were ~3400 gas stations and ~500 were unmatched (15%).

9. Reasons for Unmatched Points • Wrong zip code Street name and zip code do not match • Wrong Prefix/Suffix Street instead of Road missing N,S, W, E prefix Abbreviation – boulevard: boul\blvd • Wrong town given • Address is new 911 readdressing • Custom Addresses • Highways 123 Highway 10 instead of 123 State Hwy 10 • Geocoding standards - use 123 Hwy 10

10. Other Geocoding Sources • Louisiana Department of Social Services (DSS) • ESRI * 2 • Statistical Analysis Software (SAS) All of these sources had the same approximate error rate

11. Online Sources for Unmatched Addresses • Google Search Engine Google Maps Google Street View • Other Sources Virtual Earth Yahoo These provide other options for finding targets Search by name of business Visual inspection Verify phone numbers These have the most up to date GIS data

12. Phone Verifying Unmatched Addresses • Sometimes it works, but… • “I just work here.” • “Which way is North?” • “It is next to Bubba’s Bar B Que.” • Wrong phone number was entered. ~ 50 % of calls were successful in verifying a location

13. Other GIS data Sources • Homeland Security Infrastructure Program (HSIP) Freedom – general release Gold – reserved for declared emergencies for limited recipients • Parish Data These sources were difficult to work with without prior knowledge of the data organization and format.

14. How do we make this work? • Ownership La Department of Ag and Forest needs to keep gas stations up to date and have a mechanism to distribute them • QA, QC A commitment to insure addresses and other data are complete, accurate, and up to date needs to be sustained • GPS GPS locations are accurate regardless of addressees Procedures need to be implemented to collect GPS locations for all gas stations in the database • Web Service Web access, whether public or secure, can provide direct access to data for intended parties

15. Maintaining Currency of Dynamic Data • Many operation databases are dynamic by nature (space and time) • Dynamic databases often have missing records for new data • Dynamic Databases often include old records that should be deleted • Multiple copies of dynamic data result in different users having access to different information During emergency operation everyone needs to be on the same page!

16. Lessons Learned from 2008 • Data OwnershipAgencies with data useful in emergencies need to identify those sources, maintain them, and make them available . • Location Accuracy GPS locations should be gathered for as many critical databases as possible. These locations need to be maintained by the agencies that “own” the data. • Data Quality QA, QC should be a constant commitment. Prior to hurricane season each agency should ensure the quality of their data. • Data Access Web Services make an excellent means for sharing and distributing data. These assets should be prepositioned before hurricane season.

17. LA DOTD GIS Contacts • Jim Mitchell - IT GIS Manager Jim.Mitchell@la.gov 225-379-1881 • CJ Marchand - IT GIS DatabaseManager/ Web Developer C.Marchand@la.gov 225-379-1913 • Doug Albert – IT GIS Technical Specialist Doug.Albert@la.gov 225-379-1811 Website: http://gis.dotd.la.gov/

18. The End