Planning for the Worst

Planning for
the Worst
Christopher J. Bessert
Allegan County Land Information Systems
MiCAMP 2010 Conference
September 23, 2010
Planning for the Worst
• Introduction
• “Some may recall photos of the 1,000
vehicles enveloped in floodwaters last
year at the annual B93 Birthday Bash
concert in Ionia County. Explore ways GIS
can be used to evaluate and improve
emergency response planning for large
scale events.”
Planning for the Worst
• Overview
• B93 Birthday Bash
• June 19-20, 2010
• Two-day concert in
its 18th year
• “Known as one of the
Midwest’s premiere
free Country Music
festivals.”
Planning for the Worst
• Ionia 2009 Disaster Review
• Thousands of concertgoers vehicles
flooded when the Grand River overran its
banks
• No response plan
• Some cars stranded for a week or more
• Ionia 2009 Disaster Review
• Allegan County emergency officials
dreaded hearing the event was being
moved to their county
• Strong drive to “pre-plan,” but allowed
promoter create their own plans
• Used LIS maps and calculations to verify
the promoter’s numbers and analysis
Planning for the Worst
• Ionia 2009 Disaster Review
• Primary challenges
• Ticket structure
• Free tickets to concertgoers
• Charge per vehicle to park
• B93 (radio station) books the talent, issues the
free tickets, but takes no liability
• US-131 Motor Sports Park (venue) collects all
revenue and takes all liability
Planning for the Worst
• Capacity Planning
• Venue capacity
• Maximum number of concertgoers?
• Maximum number of vehicles?
• Press and promoter-based reports of previous
concerts helpful, but the data is questionable
Planning for the Worst
• Capacity Planning
• Source data
• LIS received concert venue diagrams from the
promoter
• Georeferenced the venue diagrams
• Imported data into GIS
• Hindsight: It may have made planning easier
or more efficient for promoter, venue and
County to have settled on common
geographic base first
Planning for the Worst
• Capacity Planning
• Capacity calculations
• Calculate number of vehicles per acre based
on shopping center parking lot aerial views
• Used “3 sq. ft. per person” comfort level for
concert venue
• Added “official” and “unofficial” parking areas
together
• Calculated total capacity for parking and
venue and compared with promoter
Planning for the Worst
• Capacity
Planning
Planning for the Worst
• Capacity
Planning
Planning for the Worst
• Capacity Planning
• Capacity calculations
• Limiting factor ended up being the availability
of parking, not the size of the venue
• LIS used “dynamic labeling” for capacity levls
• Total sq. ft. / 3 sq. ft. per person (venue capacity)
• Total acres / vehicles per acre (parking capacity)
• As area adjustments were made, dynamic labeling
would instantly update to reflect the changed
capacity
Planning for the Worst
• Capacity Planning
• Maps
Planning for the Worst
• Evacuation Planning
• Differs from “normal exiting” from venue
• Dispersing people away from the site as
quickly as possible
• LIS Staff drew evacuation routes logically
• Total miles of evacuation route calculated
based on average vehicle length (15 ft.) and
spacing between
• Exiting vehicles estimated at 1 vehicle per 5
seconds passing a certain point
Planning for the Worst
• Evacuation Planning
• All evacuation routes need to head away
from the site with few/no left turns
• Challenges
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Overall site configuration
Primary access road turns to gravel
Only one easily-access freeway interchange
Coordinating with MDOT and MSP to “coneoff” one lane of US-131 to reduce congestion
from merging and weaving movements
Planning for the Worst
• Evacuation Planning
• Maps
Planning for the Worst
• Operations Planning
• Locate access control points
• Compute access control staffing needs
• Work with law enforcement to get access
control resources deployed
• Discussed with venue the possibility of
covering access control staffing costs
Planning for the Worst
• Operations Planning
• Locate the best place for a command post
• Locate the best places for emergency
vehicle staging
• Create an overlay grid to facilitate
communication
• Identify best locations for remote camera
borrowed from Michigan State Police
Planning for the Worst
• Post Event (“debriefing”)
• Oblique aerial photos taken of event
• Attempt reasonable totals of vehicles and
attendees
• LIS staff used accurate estimation method
instead of counting every car or person
individually
• LIS staff subdivided parking and venue
areas, then made estimates based on
density and other factors
Planning for the Worst
• Post Event (“debriefing”)
• Aerial photo-based estimates jived with
numbers from law enforcement
• Media reports of attendance, though,
were rather inflated
• EOC and law enforcement chose to use
aerial estimates over media reports
• Observed that “perfect parking” is far from
what happens
Planning for the Worst
• Post Event (“debriefing”)
• In all, while no major incidents occurred
and no evacuations were needed (only a
few arrests were made), law enforcement
reported feeling more prepared and ready
to manage what happened due to the
preparations, calculations and maps
created.
Planning for the Worst
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Questions?
Comments?
Ideas?
Suggestions?