Convened: 1:05 PM Minnesota Governor s Council on Geographic Information Emergency Preparedness Committee Meeting Thursday, April 10, 2008 Lady Slipper Room, Ground Floor Centennial Office Building 658 Cedar Street, St. Paul, MN 55155 Meeting Minutes Attendance: John Hoshal, Curt Fakler, Randy Knippel, Heidi Gaedy, Joella Givens, Dan Anderson, Todd Lusk, Hart Gilchrist, John Rogers, Mike Dolbow, Patrick Waletzko, Adam Snegosky, Chad Riley, Liesa Miller, Theresa Tweet, Ron Wencl, Jim Dickerson, John Studtmann, Steve Swazee, Kris Eide, Nancy Rader, Chris Cialek, Ernest Lloyd, Dan Ross, Julie Wotczak Lead: Swazee Administrative The meeting was called to order at 1:05 p.m. by Swazee, committee co chair. A motion to approve the agenda was made by Rogers, seconded by Givens. The motion passed. Around the EPC in 120 Seconds (Swazee) Issues CAP: The $50K FDC grant has been secured. (Addressed separately) MetroGIS Policy Board Briefing, April 23: Hoshal MDH Prepare to Respond Presentation, May 6: Hoshal, Swazee InfraGard Presentation, July 8: Swazee Promotional/display items: will be posted on the SharePoint ArcGIS: 70 copies of ArcGIS 9.2 are available HAZUS MH: order forms are available Know a lawyer/accountant who will volunteer time talk to me Great Job Weinberger/Ross/Knippel/ MetroGIS Policy Board presentation Givens/Weinberger/Ross/Freed/Hoshal/Chinander HSEM Conference efforts Hoshal NSGIC participation
Chinander/Hoshal/Wencl RNC preparations Anderson/Givens/Chinander/Ross/Olson/Benson Educational profile Rogers First with 50 visits to SharePoint Wendt/Anderson Outreach to Southern MN GIS User Group Chinander/Givens/Hoshal/Wencl U.S. National Grid/Brooks visit Knippel/Basques/Klassen GEOMoose/COP development Entire Go Team EOC recommendations Everyone that made the effort to be here today! Near term goals Educational profile: A tentative education profile is available on Sharepoint; Dan Anderson is spearheading the effort to create the first educational profile for GIS professionals to become aware of what the EM community is about. Get ahead by starting to work these requirements individually. HAZUS corps: We are going to need HAZUS smart folks. Start working your training individually. Outreach is everyone s job: Example Ryan Wendt and Dan Anderson are making an effort to do outreach in southern Minnesota. FGDC Grant: John Hoshal will present information on upcoming data work group effort. Work Groups Reports Outreach: Carla Coates is out of town taking HAZUS training. On January 23, 2008, Dan Ross and Paul Weinberger presented information on GIS use after the I35W bridge collapse to the MetroGIS Policy Board. Knippel and Swazee segued with a presentation on the need for cooperation in providing data. Hoshal has been invited back to provide information on the FGDC grant project. Joella Givens organized the emergency preparedness effort at the HSEM conference. EP membership is now at 109 registered members. The web site event registration stress test (USNG presentations) was not perfect, but did a pretty good job overall. The EPC s public website will maintain a training calendar that includes access to registration and agendas. Education: Dan Anderson, Nobles County/Worthington, education work group chair, reported on the committee s March 10 meeting where a draft curriculum was prepared; there will be five levels of certification, from a basic awareness level work group through to teaching, including HAZUS, learning the National Grid, and two
levels of Go Team (basic and advanced). The first challenge will be creating an awareness level class; second will be coordinating with the Go Team as to what interactions are required to implement the curriculum. FEMA ICS training will be incorporated into the curriculum. Data: Randy Knipple, Dakota County, reported for the data work group; there have been several meetings focusing on activities to drive efforts and the Sharepoint. The Minnesota Common Operating Picture (COP) application is being used as a driver for the data discovery process and as a demonstration tool showing what data is available and as a way to share refinement to existing and additional data layers. There is intent to have a Sharepoint discussion linked to each data layer appearing in the COP application. The FGDC CAP grant focus is data stewardship; there is a need to find out what data is needed, who has the data, and then sharing that data information with local governmental units and agencies to engage them in review and refinement of the data. The next step is prioritization of the multiple lists of layers of data required for emergency preparedness. One method is to think of data as having a hierarchy or cascading prioritization as opposed to sequential. An effort will be made to leverage MetroGIS; resources are available to focus on this effort to engage local governments and MetroGIS can be used to emphasize the need to do that and to create a collaborative model. Go Team: Steve Swazee, chair of the Go Team, reported that their efforts have been productive in their first three meetings. The first meeting was held at the state EOC to explore the current GIS situation at that facility. HSEM does not have a GIS person anywhere on its staff, so LMIC provides services to HSEM on a fee for service arrangement. The Go Team has put together a list of recommendations that are published on the Sharepoint. The latest meeting of the Go Team was with Alison Slaats and Andrew Koebrick to discuss the existing emergency management contact module; there were issues with that data including the source, upkeep, and framework. From that discussion it was decided that rather than associating capabilities with a particular individual, capabilities will be associated with facilities and those facilities will be prioritized relative to their usefulness for response. In combination with the Data Work Group, the Go Team will work on how to keep a points of contact database current for various data layers. The Go Team will also work with the Education Work Group concerning implementation of a training plan for the EPC. Old Business There was no old business. New Business
There were no formal agenda items brought forward. Points of note: Meeting rooms will be scheduled for 1 hour prior to the full EPC meeting time so that work groups can meet. The 1 2 p.m. time period will deal with administrative issues. The 2 3 p.m. time period will be devoted to professional development. Meeting will end with a 30 minute meeting of the steering committee. All members of work groups have access to the Sharepoint site. Kris Eide will attempt to get the text of the Governor s message in Washington regarding critical infrastructure and emergency response. FGDC CAP Structures Grant Brief John Hoshal, LMIC, presented information on the $50,000 FGDC grant to pursue collection and distribution on structures data. This will support USGS and the national map. The data group has talked about how important it is to have good critical infrastructure data but until now there has been no money to organize and collect that information. LMIC and EPC wrote a category 5 grant, building data stewardship and collecting information for the national map. The effort was successful primarily because the focus was on stewardship of the data and laid out a framework for doing this and moving the information to the federal level. A budget will be built that will include travel to outstate Minnesota. The grant requires a $90,000 in kind match, which will be represented by the time the EPC spends on the effort along with the time of the counties and municipalities. The grant application was bolstered by a very effective letter writing campaign by local government sectors, USGS, MetroGIS, and HSEM. Partners are: GCGI EPC group is critical; MetroGIS Emergency Preparedness Committee; the Fire Wise program; state agencies, counties, and cities. The four layers being addressed are hospitals, schools, fire stations, and police stations. There are multiple efforts going on to collect this data. Data is currently being requested by the State Demographer regarding group quarters for the US Census Bureau in anticipation of the 2010 census. Group quarters include prisons, group home facilities, special care facilities, hospitals, clinics, university dormitories, and a variety of other group quarters data. Data layers can be expanded and it is important now to determine priorities relative to other data sets. If the data stewardship piece is done properly, collecting additional information should be able to be done. Key will be: identifying authoritative sources, determining minimum attributes required to support the information and make it useful, harvesting the data, building a stewardship program allowing maintenance to be done over time, publishing the structures data on a variety of websites. The role of MetroGIS will be very important and engages local, county, state, and regional governments. Web tools will be used to collect information and that includes the Fire Wise map server application which is very helpful in allowing contributors to go in and review their data. Work on preparing the contract will be started in the next week and the grant should be in place by June 1, 2008; the project must be completed in 12 months.
Information from Kris Eide There has been little effort at the county level outside the metro area to incorporate technology into mitigation and response plans. Currently, there is no requirement in the submission of a mitigation plan by a county to the state for there to be any incorporation of geospatial awareness. The State would like counties to move toward bringing geospatial awareness to the local level so that response plans submitted are all uniform. Four steps have been developed to move local governments to the desired technology level: 1) volunteer efforts by EPC committee members and others to take HAZUS training; 2) work to create a HAZUS user group to begin an educational piece involving the EM people; 3) bring in outside instructors to fine tune the product; 4) gain enough momentum to have a self sustaining program that provides valuable information for planning, mitigation, response and recovery for all levels of government. Kris Eide has provided the Go Team with full access to DisasterLAN. Motion to end meeting: Hoshal moved and Dolbow seconded ending the administrative portion of the EPC meeting. Motion passed. EPC administrative meeting concluded after 1 hour. EPC Professional Development Lecture: U.S. National Grid For Decision Makers Speaker: Talbot Brooks, Delta State University. The presentation was taped but not transcribed. EPC Professional Development Concluded after 1 hour Steering Committee Following the presentation by Talbot Brooks, Swazee called the Steering Committee meeting to order. Meeting was used for coordination between Work Groups, lasted 30 minutes and was not recorded.