OGC Disaster Pilot

GISMO Selected for OGC DP-24 Grant

February 13, 2024

We are pleased to announce that the GISMO has been selected by the The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to receive a grant to develop a pilot project as part of its Climate and Disaster Resilience Program, DP-24. 

The GISMO team which includes Professor Sean Ahearn of Hunter College, and CEO Ajay Gupta of HSR.health, among others, will be addressing extreme heat events that may also be compounded by a power blackout. 

We expect to model NYC in 3D using the City’s excellent enterprise GIS data, analyze the likely scale and types of heat illnesses expected, and assess mitigation and response strategies. 

This follows GISMO’s work on OGC’s DP-23 initiative where we worked with Basil Labs CEO Theo Goetemann on a citizen science project involving smartphones, voice translation and digitization, AI complaint classification, and spatial analytics for large populations caught within a disaster area.

The OGC pilot showed that public agencies and health departments often lack a full picture of extreme heat impacts. Official temperature readings do not reflect what residents experience at street level or inside overheated homes. And without accurate data, many heat-related deaths go unnoticed.

At the same time, we also learned that important work is underway across cities to reduce the urban heat island effect. With the growing availability of geospatial tools, sensor technologies, and data integration platforms, cities now have better ways to understand heat risk and take targeted action.

We expect that improved forecasting, real-time sensing, detailed heat maps, and 3D building models can help local governments plan more effective cooling strategies, identify the most vulnerable communities, and deploy resources where they are most needed. With smarter use of data, we can help cities protect their residents, prevent avoidable deaths, and prepare for a hotter future.

For more information see the OGC Climate and Disaster Resilience Pilot 2024 Engineering Report.

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GISMO Wins Two Grants To Develop Citizen Science Applications for OGC’s Disaster Pilot 21 and 23. Basil Labs and GISMO develop the Emergency Location and Language Application (ELLA).

May 9, 2023

Earthquakes, hurricanes, forest fires or pandemics: Disasters with devastating effects on people and nature occur again and again. Climate change and global warming are exacerbating the problem and forcing us to act quickly. 

Using new technologies to save lives – that’s where Disaster Pilot 2023 comes in. After all, we already have access to a wealth of Earth observation data – from space, measured by temperature, pressure or humidity sensors on the ground, reported by government agencies or collected by a volunteer’s cell phone. But how can we bring all this data together and make it useful? 

Our vision is to use standards for sharing geospatial data along with web technologies and cloud computing. This will allow responsible stakeholders to collaborate no matter where they are, use relevant data no matter where it is stored, and manage any phase of a disaster at any scale, no matter where it threatens.