Optimizing health response during wild fires with real-time, integrated data

The majority of disasters today result in cases of morbidity and mortality that last long after the acute event has passed. In the United States, wildfires and hurricanes typically result in power outages and evacuations that disrupt access to wages, healthcare, food security, and stable housing, sometimes for extended periods of time. Studies show that these disruptions disproportionately affect medically-vulnerable, poor, elderly, and structurally disadvantaged populations, leading to uneven patterns of morbidity and mortality that already exist among these communities before the disaster takes place.

As the incidence of natural disasters increases around the world, it is of chief importance that emergency preparedness and response is able to meet the needs of the communities most affected by them. This is CrisisReady’s rationale behind launching ReadyMapper, an interactive reporting dashboard designed to optimize disaster response by combining near real-time data on population dynamics, infrastructure status, and health system capacities.

The ReadyMapper Tool

The ReadMapper tool is the outcome of a three-year collaborative effort between CrisisReady and Stamen Design, a data visualization design studio based in San Francisco, California.

The tool combines data on community demographics, vulnerabilities, infrastructure, and mobility to track the evolving medical needs as populations evacuate affected areas. The current iteration provides data analyses on five disaster events that occurred within the United States in 2021 and 2022. This includes:

• Dixie Fire (July 13, 2021): A wildfire that burned through Butte, Plumas, Lassen, Shasta, and Tehama Counties in Northern California.
• Caldor Fire (Began August 14, 2021): A wildfire that burned through the Eldorado National Forest and other areas of the Sierra Nevada in Eastern California.
• Hurricane Ida (Began August 26, 2021): A category 4 Atlantic hurricane that became the second-most damaging and intense hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. state of Louisiana on record, behind Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
• Marshall Fire (Began December 30, 2021): A wildfire that burned in Boulder County, Colorado.
• Oak Fire (Began July 22, 2022): A large-scale wildfire that began burning near Midpines and Mariposa, California. Note: the tool’s visualizations of the Oak Fire are in development.

Mapping Vulnerability

The tool’s first vantage point presents data on population vulnerabilities, which can be defined in multiple and often intersecting ways.

Here, data reflecting the number of individuals over the age of 65 years old as representative of several types of vulnerabilities, such as the need for medical care, food security, assistance with mobility, and access to durable medical equipment. 

There are other composite indices taken into account, including the Healthy Places Index (HPI) published by the Public Health Alliance of Southern California’s and the Social Vulnerability index published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). Immigration status and language barriers are additional vulnerabilities considered in these visualizations.

Mapping Movement

The tool’s second vantage point presents data on human mobility and movement patterns during an emergency event. These data provide information about where communities are evacuating from, where they are going, and when they are moving.

The patterns these data highlight have important implications for the allocation of aid and the anticipation of patient needs at medical facilities during (or after) evacuation activities take place. They also provide important information for response agencies to understand which areas people should move towards to ensure their safety. 

These visualizations are generated from aggregated and anonymized data made available by Meta (formerly Facebook).

Mapping Healthcare Infrastructure

The third vantage point presents data on healthcare facilities located in areas impacted by an emergency event. These data help identify what services are threatened or lost during a disaster and what services remain available to affected communities.

These data provide information on the capacities of nearby healthcare facilities and the disruptions in critical infrastructures (or hazards) that may result in large-scale disaster situations.

Just as routine forecasting for epidemics is an important goal for pandemic preparedness, anticipating both the immediate surge in patients and the longer-term dynamics of the medical needs of communities displaced by a natural disaster ought to become the routine to improve response.

Seamless Report Generation

Customizable reports may be generated in portable document format to provide curated insights that meet specific user needs. Dashboard visualizations can be captured in these reports, filtered by geography, time, and other attributes of interest. The PDFs are modular, allowing users to include or exclude entire sections, and rearrange the flow of information. The digital versions include smart navigation functions.