From hazard map to live incident
Emergency managers and fire and flood responders win or lose the event in the planning phase: who is in the flood path, where the surge tops out, which roads survive, and where to stage before the call comes in. Smart Site Plan pulls FEMA flood zones, NOAA surge, and NHD hydrography over the affected parcels so you build the pre-incident picture in the browser, then run the live response on the same map with GPS tracking, field forms, and, on Team, offline share links that keep working when cell service does not.
Real Public safety work over Waynesville, NC, captured in the product
The old way
Building an evacuation picture means tracing flood and surge zones by eye across agency viewers and a stack of PDFs. When the event hits and the network goes down, the field falls back to paper maps and radio call-outs, and damage numbers come back days later in a spreadsheet nobody can put on a map.
With Smart Site Plan
Map the hazard, stage the response, work it with no signal
The data, already on the map
Drawn from 20 million open datasets, one click each. No agency portal hunting, no format wrangling.
Workflows
How Public safety work gets done
End to end, in the browser, on one map.
Pre-incident flood evacuation plan
- 1. Open Data
Add FEMA NFHL flood zones, NOAA surge, NHD hydrography, and county parcels scoped to the jurisdiction.
- 2. Smart Query
Select every parcel that falls inside a flood zone or below the surge elevation to build the affected-property list.
- 3. Draw
Lay out evacuation corridors, shelter catchments, and staging points with live length and area, clear of the water.
- 4. Style
Color parcels by flood zone and risk so the EOC reads exposure at a glance in the briefing.
- 5. Share
Publish an offline share link of the plan (Team) that field leads open without an account, even with no signal.
Live incident coordination
- 1. Alerts
Set an alert on the watch boundary so the EOC is notified when conditions change inside it.
- 2. GPS
Track responding crews and apparatus live on the same map as the hazard layers.
- 3. Collaborate
Use live sync to keep the EOC and field commanders on the same map in real time.
- 4. Photos
Capture geotagged photos of road closures, breaches, and blocked routes pinned to exact coordinates.
Post-event damage assessment
- 1. Forms
Field teams complete custom damage assessment forms, starting drafts offline and submitting on reconnect.
- 2. Property data
Tie each assessed structure to its parcel ownership, valuation, and tax record for the reporting package.
- 3. Photos
Attach geotagged before and after photos to each damaged structure.
- 4. Export
Export the affected-property layer as GeoJSON and CSV on Pro, with an HD PDF for the FEMA submission.
What you can do
Build the pre-incident hazard picture
Stack FEMA NFHL flood zones, NOAA surge, and NHD streams over county parcels and Census demographics to see exactly which properties and how many people sit in the flood or wildfire path. Run a Smart Query to pull every parcel inside a mapped zone or below an elevation threshold so the evacuation list is built before the warning goes out, not during it.
Plan evacuation routes and staging
Draw evacuation corridors, shelter catchments, and resource staging points with live length and area readouts, checking each route against flood zones, hydrography, and USGS elevation so you do not stage crews in the path of the water. Style parcels by zone or risk so the EOC reads the map at a glance during a briefing.
Run live field coordination during the event
Track crews and apparatus live by GPS while responders capture geotagged photos and damage forms pinned to exact coordinates, with live sync keeping the EOC and the field on the same map in real time. Set Alerts on a monitored boundary so the EOC is notified the moment conditions or activity change inside the watch area.
Capture and roll up damage assessment
Field teams fill custom damage assessment forms, including drafts started offline, and submit on reconnect so the EOC sees affected-structure counts populate the map as they come in instead of a spreadsheet days later. Each record carries geotagged photos and ties to the underlying parcel for the FEMA reporting package.
The capabilities Public safety teams lean on
Hazard layers over parcels
FEMA flood, NOAA surge, and NHD hydrography drop in over county parcels and Census demographics so the affected-population picture is built from real authoritative data, not traced by eye.
GPS, forms, and damage photos
Live crew tracking, offline damage assessment forms, and geotagged photos keep field response and recovery pinned to exact coordinates and tied to parcels.
One live map for the EOC and the field
Live sync keeps the EOC and the field on one map during the event, and on Team offline share links open with no login and no signal in the dead zones.
Query the affected list, draw the routes
Smart Query pulls every parcel inside a flood or surge zone, and Draw lays out evacuation corridors and staging clear of the water with live readouts.
In practice
Standing up a river-flood plan along the Mississippi
With the Mississippi River cresting and 36 hours of rise forecast, an emergency manager in Scott County, Iowa, adds FEMA NFHL flood zones, the NHD river network, and county parcels scoped to the river towns, then runs a Smart Query to pull every parcel below the projected flood elevation, giving a ready affected-property list and population count from Census demographics. She draws three evacuation corridors and two staging points clear of the mapped water, styles parcels by zone for the EOC briefing, and publishes an offline share link. When cell service drops in the bottomlands that night, field leads still open the plan, track their crews by GPS, and submit damage forms that populate the EOC map the moment they reconnect.
What changes
- The affected-property and affected-population list is built before the warning goes out, not during the event
- Evacuation routes and staging are checked against flood zones and elevation so crews are not put in the path of the water
- The EOC and the field work the same live map with crew GPS and live sync
- Field forms keep working with no signal, and so do Team offline share links, so the response does not fall back to paper and radio
- Damage counts populate the map as forms submit, and roll up to a FEMA-ready export instead of a days-late spreadsheet
Public safety, answered
Yes. Damage assessment forms fill as drafts offline and submit on reconnect, and on Team offline share links open with no login and no signal, so a field lead in a coastal dead zone still works the same plan and map as the EOC.
More in Public & knowledge
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