Disaster Mapping: Forging a New Method for Diaster Planning in Social Services
In 2009, SafeMeasures deployed a near real-time mapping service that displays the location of children receiving services. We use existing data to display the children's geographical locations.
Shortly after we released the maps, a California county asked if we could map the locations of foster care children to help staff determine when children were threatened by wildfires. We devised a technique to overlay the location and perimeters of active and recent fires on a map with the children's geographic locations. We have since added earthquake, flood, and tornado events.
These "disaster maps," as they're called in the field, had immediate results. Only days after we rolled out the maps, San Bernardino County was shaken by a mild earthquake. The agency was immediately able to identify hundreds of foster children within a critical distance of the epicenter and follow up on the children's safety.
A San Bernardino employee was grateful for the disaster map. He stated, "The listing I was able to pull up from SafeMeasures lets me see the locations of 380 foster children living within a three mile radius of the epicenter." In a disaster situation, the ability to respond quickly is vital; thanks to the disaster maps, San Bernardino staff did not have to spend valuable time running queries to determine which children they needed to check up on--they were able to "rip and run."
In "Mapping a Plan for Disaster Readiness," we illustrate the impact social services data and mapping can have on more effective disaster planning.
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Identify problems.
This graph shows how SafeMeasures helped San Francisco identify a problem with practice. They had feared that they would need increased resources to improve their performance. Through the easy access to underlying data that SafeMeasures allows, San Francisco discovered that the problem wasn't unmade contacts, but was instead data entry issues. As shown, once workers were made aware of the issue, their compliance began to rise immediately, and they have sustained a high level of compliance since.
Clarify practice.
This graph illustrates how unclear practice standards can drastically affect compliance. This graph shows how a misunderstanding led to what appears to be very poor performance. However, once the standard was clearly communicated to workers through SafeMeasures and elsewhere, people were aware of the standard (in this case, when the clock starts ticking on how quickly contact must be made with a client), and compliance shot up.
Monitor progress.
SafeMeasures offers agency-wide utility. Everyone shares the same reports: administrators can track their county; supervisors can track their unit; workers can track their cases. When data are transparent, everyone becomes invested in the quality of those data, and more importantly, everyone sees the benefit—improved services to their clients.
