 Hey, how are you doing today Ed? Good. How's it going Karen? Not too bad I got a phone call a little earlier this morning from from FEMA asking me to consider some ways that we might be able to employ remote sensing to help you with the Individual assistance and housing inspection program. I don't really understand your program at all So before I make any suggestions. I was hoping you could tell me a little bit more about how your job is done Yeah, that'd be great. I'd be happy to We get activated once a presidentially declared disaster is Is made and they declare it for individual assistance and FEMA will call us up and ask us to send inspectors out into the field The purpose of the inspectors going into the field is to verify the damage that has occurred to the houses and to do a An assessment of the damage and then to provide that information back up to To FEMA so the FEMA can then decide whether or not they are eligible for money for assistance from FEMA to To help them with the damage that's occurred to their house as a result of the declared disaster So can you clarify for me just for a minute individual assistance is The money that FEMA would send out to an individual who was affected by the storm Yeah, there's several different types of aid that FEMA has the two of the primary ones are public assistance and individual assistance and the public assistance deals with the Infrastructure that's owned by the city or community such as roads Pipelines where water treatment plants wastewater treatment plants Those types of publicly owned facilities and then the other one the one that I'm involved in more for individual assistance really deals with Individual homeowners when they've had damage to their Property they can call a 800 number or they can go online and they can register for assistance with with FEMA and FEMA has a Process to screen out people who are not eligible for the Assistance and that those they think might are eligible then they will take their application and then provide us with the information and Then we go out and send our inspectors out into the field to To do an inspection of their house but we have a very quick turnaround time and One of the things we really need to do is be able to have our inspectors get out there in a hurry and to do that We need to project what how many how many inspectors? We're going to need because we have to put all these independent contractor inspectors on standby for a period of Prior to a storm happening or to a disaster being declared. So one of the of the needs that we have is how do we? Estimate how many inspections there is going to be If we know the the weather that's coming if we know that it's going to be a flooding disaster for example and we know the Counties that are likely to be declared because of this We you know can have all these different tools But are in our information sources and then put them all together in a tool that will help us to Estimate the number of inspections that are going to be and then we can use that number to kind of figure out How many inspectors to send so we don't send too many and we have the right number So we try to get it as close as we can so You would be looking at past history population density Probability of flooding Those kinds of things to determine how many households might be affected by a particular storm exactly We have the right number of housing inspectors on standby That how quickly from the time a person calls the 800 number and says you know I need money for a hotel or you know, I need Some kind of an assistance, but What is the turnaround time they should expect before they get an answer back from FEMA as to whether they're eligible? Well contractually we're required once we receive the inspection from FEMA to to do the inspection and turn it back to them in 72 hours So so contractually we'll get it back up to them It'll be a little longer than that for the actual applicant to receive a word because there's a little time to get the inspection to us at the beginning and then after we get it back up to FEMA then they have to process it and go through up the Assertation or ascertaining whether or not the they're eligible for the aid or not So, you know usually you could estimate probably seven to ten days for the between the time they call them the time They get an answer back and as I understand these payments are not so much to do repairs on Repair your house or supplement for insurance, but this is more like you need a place to stay temporarily or you have medical expenses or just Emergency living expenses to help that homeowner over the Right time period when insurance will eventually kick in and so on right right. It's definitely a temporary housing program I mean the goal of the program is to get people under under a roof if they their house is not Habitable for them to live in so that is definitely the goal of the program But you're right It doesn't pay if they have insurance coverage the insurance would cover their expenses and so forth Then the the FEMA's individual assistance program does not provide benefits for them Unless there's a deductible that they could pay for or for some costs that the insurance are not paying for but it doesn't pay where insurance is Covering the loss. So the point of the housing inspection is not to assess the amount of damage to the house For insurance purposes. It's more to establish that that person has legitimate claim for this emergency assistance They actually had a house. It's actually been destroyed. They actually can't live in it and they actually do need temporary housing, right? Yes, it's not a structural inspection. So to speak it's to validate that they have a legitimate claim for emergency assistance right our inspectors collect a lot of information to prove that that it is the homeowners primary residents that they own the house that they're in and that the damage occurred as a result of the storm and that And that They're out there eligible as a result of that because it happened during the period of the incident period for the for the Disaster okay, so going back to my the question about the Geospatial information and remote sensing. I heard two possible applications in what you described one would be Helping with probably some demographic information Information about the area that would help you in that planning Determining the amount of capacity that you might need having some just general map information parcel information and so on that would help you estimate the number of homes that might need to be inspected and I imagine you probably Do you need some help also in Determining how to route people around or where to deploy your Yeah, we call that process a signing we have to assign the inspect inspections to specific inspectors and that that is another Process where if we know where the inspectors are located and we know where the Applications are coming in from FEMA as in real-time data is coming into us. We then have to Give the assign the inspectors with the inspections that are closest to where they're located to make it most efficient That helps the inspector out because they can get more inspections time But it helps the applicants out as well because that that allows them to To have the more inspections done More quickly getting quicker service getting better service. So that is definitely an application And I imagine that you know acting the does that in the disaster response situation Not only are you looking at the ideal situation of you know here are the inspectors and here are the Here are the applicants, but there may be roads closed or Blockages due to debris and so on so maybe having some imagery or Some image or a remotely sensed information right away that would tell you about The trend the situation of transportation might might also be helpful right how to route our inspectors and what Oftentimes obviously if you're dealing with a flooding disaster You've got a body of water somewhere and if it's wiped out a bridge or access somewhere Then we have to look at alternate routes for our inspectors to travel in order to to reach all of the Applicants that have applied for aid So it's sometimes it's a matter of keeping people in one location and other times It's a matter of having people to move if there's not enough damage in one place And there's not enough work getting done here then we have to relocate all of our inspectors to where the damage is and that certainly is a big part of it as if there's any Damage to infrastructure and there are databases out there that the state maintains that Emergency services would maintain that would Provide that type of of information that we can then use to help get our job done that being getting inspections Completed okay, so that's one that that's in terms of facilitating and increasing the efficiency of the actual on the site inspection process how about There's a rating way we might be able to use Remote sensing to eliminate the need for the inspector to go to actually go on site. What kinds of things do they? What kind of damage do they really need to assess and is there a way that we could we could? Determine that a house has been destroyed simply by looking at an aerial photo for example after the event Well, there is a lot of detailed information that collect on the inspections on each one of them However, there's a limit on the total amount of money that can be provided under this program and Once a house is is destroyed or if it reaches a certain level of damage beyond which It would exceed the amount of the program then it there is a potential opportunity to use some type of remote sensing to To ascertain that the house has has already reached that level if it's below that level There really needs to be a detailed assessment of what the costs are but types of data that might be able to be used to make that Assessment would be Your image that you're talking about of the damaged area to start with And then we'd have to link that somehow with the owners of the property because we can't just We don't know who the owners are just by taking a picture of the of their property from an airplane or from a satellite or anything like that So there has to be some link that has to happen between the ownership of the property and the the damage to that specific Dwelling so that's that's a hurdle that needs to be overcome and doing this type of remote Inspections another piece of data would be where the water level is because from past experience we know if if it's a flooding disaster or if it's a hurricane and there's Water up to a certain level in the house we can pretty much assume that that house is going to exceed the capacity for the In damages for what the the program can offer so in a really extensive disaster like I'm thinking back to Hurricane Floyd for example in North Carolina where a substantial portion of the state east of I-95 was actually completely under water completely submerged where obviously the Situation in New Orleans where large seamless Continuous areas were significantly inundated and If we could delineate a large area and say basically everyone within this area can be considered to have been totally displaced That might knock out a large number of your individual onsite visits fairly efficiently Without much room for error Assuming we can make that connection I talked about is who owns that property and if it's a primary residence to if it's a if it's their vacation home along the coast This program doesn't cover that so you'd have to make that differentiation of who owns the property Who's living in it and renters are treated differently than homeowners? Renters are eligible for aid under the program, but because they don't own the house They're not when the inspector does the inspection He doesn't look at any of what we call real property, which is the structure of the dwelling itself the inspector Focuses on personal property, which would be the contents the personal items that the renters own and so forth So there's still there can't be a wholesale just jump to to that without somehow understanding the the rules of the of the program and how they apply to to the individuals so there needs to be some Data introduced which ascertains who the owners are whether it's a principal residence or whether it's a vacation home whether they're owners or renters and And get all that information combined with the the delineation that you're talking about that can then Avoid or reduce certainly reduce the number of inspections that would we would need to do You know in person so we definitely could have an overview image from various sources that would need to be of High enough resolution that we could see some individual features about the house for example I would have met you know, it's fairly easy to tell the house is completely Maybe easy to tell the house is completely gone Assuming there's some trace a pad or some evidence that you can see that there was something there But what if there is We could for example probably tell how many walls are left standing or what percentage of the roof has been destroyed We're obviously not going to be able to see the contents inside the house or Any it's going to be a vertical view from above So we're not going to be able to look at things like broken windows or you know, they assess the Condition of the sides of the building where we can tell that it's either there or it's not there Or it's only partially standing Or the roof is completely off So we can get that kind of overview from a from an aerial image But then you're also saying there's a large amount database information that would have to be Geocoded in some way that we could then create a map that would include that background image as well as Land ownership information That would help us identify All of those things about right about the individual homeowner that you're mentioning. Yeah, exactly And where does that information get collected in the inspection process now? Well, the inspectors have a Computer program they carry a small field computer with them and there's a program in it Which they they do the inspection in and the very first part of their inspection is to ask the homeowner for Proof of ownership and Proof that they're it's their principal residents and if they have insurance they have to show insurance There's a whole quite series of questions that the inspectors have to go through in order to to collect all this this information So this would assume that the homeowner is actually physically present at the inspection. That is true another logistic Logistical problem they have to solve Absolutely evacuated or don't necessarily have access back into the area, right? And if it is a major disaster like that the program is is at a bit of a disadvantage because it does rely on on meeting with the homeowner the Inspector and the homeowner meeting together at the the damage dwelling and reviewing the the questions I was talking about the ownership and so forth But then going through, you know, basically a room-by-room delineation of what damage occurred as a result of it And if it's you know catastrophic and there's you know Thousands and tens of thousands of people that are not available to do it the program kind of grinds to a bit of a halt in terms of the the standard method of Conducting business so it's at those points in time where we really need to to look outside the box and figure out what ways we can accomplish the the objective of getting aid to the disaster victims and That can include tracking down where they are in shelters And when they collect their information from the registration intake I try to send inspectors there Who then can then possibly go to the dwelling and and and view it? But if it's a if it's an area where there's a lot of damage I mean it's so catastrophic like you were explaining like there's just a foundation left or something And we can just get that matchup of of data to prove ownership Then and where the people are to send them their their aid to because obviously they don't have a Mailbox any longer at their property then then the remote Inspection or remote imaging to help with the inspections is certainly a good Good idea, and if we had so if we had imagery available and we were able to delineate Or categorize you know total catastrophic damage significant, you know Basically the how there's something left of the house, but it's uninhabitable versus this is probably could be repaired We could make those categorizations or delineations and provide that as Some information maybe as the claims are coming in And you're getting addresses and information from people of the inspectors or the people Assigning the inspectors could be looking at an aerial photo at the same time It might could that possibly streamline the process Yeah, certainly could if there was That kind of information can all came together at the same time They could somehow submit this their proof of ownership or proof of primary residence as part of the application process All right, it sounds like overall incorporating these technologies into the current Day-to-day Operations or way of doing business is going to be somewhat challenging Definitely, there's definitely some obstacles will have to overcome to do it But as technology improves over the years I would anticipate that that's going to become a little easier to do and maybe the data on home ownership is going to be a little easier to To get from a database instead of having to get it, you know the inspectors asking to see their Deed or their insurance policy or whatever it is to prove the ownership so I think that there is a lot of opportunity for Looking at technology to to certainly improve it another area We're looking at technology to help improve is our training because we train these inspectors when there's not a disaster We go throughout the United States different places and train them So if we have you know geo coded data for their their addresses where they they live and They've gone through our basic training, but we want to keep them around even though there's not been a lot of disasters We want to have them go through an advanced training. We can then do a search geographically for Central location that would be good to get a group of inspectors could all come to one place to do advanced training So there's there's another application there. I think that could help us out with You know getting more training for our inspectors to make the process again More efficient once they do hit the ground and one other thing that occurs to me as you're describing Some of this information about property ownership becoming more easily readily available This must raise some questions of privacy in terms of values of homes or the status of a particular homeowner Is there a need to is some of the information that you collect considered Private and is there a need to provide security for that information? Yeah, we do we have to to have an IT security plan as part of our Contract with FEMA and we do have to protect the data that that is collected. We try to minimize the the amount of personal data that actually goes Down to the inspectors and then goes back up to FEMA and some of that personal information On income and social security numbers and so forth is all kept at FEMA So we don't see that information out in the field. That's one of the ways we try to avoid that issue of privacy, but but certainly it is something we do take seriously and we We instruct all of our inspectors that this information is Confidential that they're supposed to treat it as such and we make sure that we Treated as we're supposed to Well, thanks a lot, and I really appreciate you taking the time to help me out with this today Okay, hopefully we can come up with some ways to make your program more efficient great. I look forward to it