GEOINT's Role in the Hurricane Katrina Disaster Response

Introduction to GEOINT and Mission Command

The American federal government's response operation in the aftermath of the 2005 disaster, Hurricane Katrina, establishes a crucial military necessity of improving the nation's evaluation, decision-making, and response processes. Operational art, design, and other similar concepts apparently offer a means for framing the operational issue. However, both aforementioned elements are unable to effectively improve commanders' capacity to grasp the condition on the ground. Processes like those mentioned above prove inadequate when it comes to solving key questions and translating them into missions for troops to execute.

The process of situation evaluation commences with the examination of a map by military staff members and commanders. This is where GEOINT (Geospatial Intelligence) comes in. GEOINT refers to an emergent subfield in the intelligence domain responsible for offering comprehensive information analyses, an operational environment evaluation, and a way to examine potential issues which might surface. GEOINT represents the utilization and examination of geospatial information and imagery for describing, evaluating, and visually depicting geographically indicated activities and physical features on the planet.¹ This paper appraises GEOINT's role with respect to responding to Hurricane Katrina.

GEOINT's probable value resides in the field's capacity to bring analysis that informs every phase of the mission command commander's visualization. Mission Command Field Manual 6-0's Chapter IV states that the commander visualization activity encompasses the intellectual procedure of attaining a clear grasp of the present condition of the force relative to its environment and its adversaries. Commanders constantly create a mental picture of their military operations by means of situation comprehension, operations planning, assessment, and implementation.² The foremost step for a commander is the development of situational understanding — military commanders are required to grasp the situation prior to commencing planning activities.

The next step for commanders is contemplating where they need to be headed and how their operations will play out, in addition to understanding the effectiveness of their troops. Operation visualization commences with planning, continues throughout the implementation phase, and ends with mission completion. Commanders direct their units' planning endeavors by offering support, ideas on purpose, and key information requirements. GEOINT's embedded shared operating picture aids commanders in ensuring their visualization remains current. Lastly, evaluation takes place in every visualization phase during mission command. At first, commanders rely on their team members, their own individual experiences, and evaluations from the units charged with mission implementation. GEOINT's capability of organizing facts, querying particular data, and offering trend analysis facilitates constant evaluation through each visualization phase.

The Geospatial Intelligence process, facilitated by a thorough examination of GISs (geographic information systems), presents to commanders the science that supplements the commander's application of military tactics. GISs facilitate the visualization process by offering software tools which allow complex, multifaceted information display capable of more precisely representing a given scenario. Further, it allows estimations, predictions, and forecasting. GEOINT helps Mission Command through the establishment of a base for collective understanding, as well as the capacity of analyzing layered information which aids subordinate troops' parallel planning process.³

GEOINT's Analytical and Modeling Capabilities

The real potential of GEOINT resides in its capacity to foresee scenarios by creating analytical models which offer commanders and military planners a tool for anticipating changes and their impacts within their operational domains. This provides context and helps enhance understanding. An effectively utilized GEOINT system offers these personnel valuable model-derived estimates that support evaluations, giving rise to a more precise projection of their operational setting and situation.

Civil governments and private entities have been employing GISs for many years. GIS capability employment in the areas of homeland security and disaster response is a relatively new venture.⁴

Hurricane Katrina: The Federal Response and Its Shortcomings

The 2005 Hurricane Katrina ranks among one of America's most devastating hurricanes. A majority of publications on this natural disaster revolve around governmental incapacity to react on time and alleviate affected citizens' suffering. Because it failed to coordinate a consolidated rescue and response effort, the government ended up failing the many institutions that participated in consequence management and the response endeavor. Homeland Security's recommendations only revolved around uniting efforts among governmental levels and strengthening working relationships. This approach, while helpful, was unsuccessful in providing a tangible means to attain required outcomes and improve the government's response within its National Response Framework (NRF).

The required strategy was delivered by GEOINT's modeling abilities. Planners need to inform decision-making entities of their possible requirements by utilizing GEOINT modeling abilities for anticipating, estimating, and comprehending a storm's effect once it hits land. GEOINT's modeling abilities help coordinate governmental response more effectively at every level and decrease redundancy, thereby improving unity of effort. GEOINT, after all, is a primary analytical tool capable of ensuring that efforts expended by civilian as well as governmental volunteers are complementary to one another.

By employing GEOINT to develop a situational understanding of a storm's effect on a given area, decision-making entities can concentrate on improving support organizations' efficacy. GEOINT capacities are able to improve the disaster response capacity of decision-making entities. Nevertheless, understanding GEOINT's application both prior to and subsequent to Hurricane Katrina is imperative. An examination of GEOINT application in the days before the hurricane made landfall — and immediately prior to its striking — helps account for why decision-making bodies could not comprehensively grasp the situation: they lacked complete awareness and understanding of what GEOINT was capable of providing.⁵

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's Contributions

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) can be counted among the few organizations at the federal level that provided timely assistance and eased the recovery process for every entity engaged in consequence management and disaster response. The Agency commenced collection of important infrastructure-linked information — including airports, educational institutions, hospitals, emergency operations facilities, police stations, and highways — well in advance. This effort ensured resident first responders, state agencies, and federal agencies were equipped with crucial information.

As the former two groups of responders lacked an understanding of their NRF-related role, they did not seek NGA guidance during planning. However, the Agency anticipated their requirements and directed the right information into the right hands on time. At the time of the hurricane's approach, it placed mobile systems and analysts in areas where the hurricane would strike, offering data and expertise, and enabling extra information delivery from Agency offices in non-vulnerable areas. Because it had resources ready and concentrated in these areas, it could offer the most detailed outline of the hurricane's damage. The Agency combined imagery and other data on a daily basis, developing numerous intelligence products to support response decision-makers. Its evaluations were complex, consistent, timely, and relevant. These GIS analysts delivered quantitative data to decision makers to facilitate recovery at every governmental level.⁶

Conclusion

In Hurricane Katrina's case, every governmental level employed GEOINT technology for supporting disaster consequence management and response. GEOINT directed first responders' and EOCs' efforts whilst simultaneously supporting infrastructure restoration and search-and-rescue operations throughout New Orleans.

Bibliography

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