GIS Natural Hazards Mitigation

Progress to date – March 1, 2023:

What’s new

As of March 1st, 2023, the Natural Hazards Mitigation (NHM) project remains in the execution phase and is on schedule.  The project has been focused on key project documentation deliverables, engaging with Agency workgroups to onboard key datasets, and drafting a platform data sharing agreement for Agencies. 

Current status:

• The project team is focused on drafting a data sharing agreement (DSA) framework for the platform and are consulting with the State Privacy Officer this month to finalize the DSA.
• “Hazard Mitigation Profiles” for the State’s Enhanced Hazard Mitigation Plan are being transformed into use cases within the Portal.  The team is working with the WA Military Dept. to draft out the Tsunami Hazard Profile as the first step.
• The Organizational Change Management Plan and a Platform Readiness checklist have been completed as the project continues to progress toward completion.
• Additional agencies have been onboarded via ArcGIS Distributed Collaborations and continue testing out specific data sharing use cases through GeoPortal 2.0.
• GeoPortal 2.0 “Open Office” meetings are continuing monthly and are open to any interested current or future stakeholders.  See the “Upcoming events” section for more information.

Project achievements:

• Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) has been fully implemented as the authentication method for all GeoPortal 2.0 environments (PROD/DEV).
• Full system backups are now in-place for the production and development environments.
• Seven Distributed Collaborations now exist between State Agencies and GeoPortal 2.0.
• Category 3 spatial data can now be fully supported on GeoPortal, the team is awaiting final approval from the Office of Cybersecurity (OCS).
• Geographic redundancy for the Platform has been fully implemented. Failover testing from Olympia to the Quincy Datacenter was successful.

Background

The Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) was tasked by the Legislature to develop a common data-sharing platform for public organizations in Washington to host and share sensitive natural hazards mitigation geospatial data. There is no common platform for state, local and higher-education organizations to share existing state geospatial data on natural hazards risks. A lack of data in standardized and compatible formats results in organizations maintaining individual sets of data, creating redundant processes and leads to inconsistencies in how data is reported.

This project will provide consistent natural hazards data for use by state, local and higher-education organizations to support state hazard risks and resilience mapping and analysis. Legislation has identified $724,000 in funding to create this common platform and has established an expectation for the data platform to be available by June 30, 2023. 

The following organizations were identified by the state Legislature and are members of the project steering committee and customer advisory group: Department of Ecology, Department of Natural Resources, Sea Grant Washington, Climate Impacts Group, Office of the Insurance Commissioner, State Department of Health and the State Water Research Center.

More information

This project is being led by the OCIO Geospatial Program Office.  If you would like to be a part of this project and/or want to know more, please reach out to one of the following project team members:

• Joanne Markert, State GIS Coordinator, Project Business Sponsor, joanne.markert@watech.wa.gov.
• Ron Mathews, Enterprise Project Office, IT Project Manager, ron.mathews@watech.wa.gov.
• Kirk Davis, GIS Data Administrator, Project Lead, kirk.davis@watech.wa.gov.