South Carolina Scales GIS to Enhance Emergency Management Operations

During each activation, the South Carolina Emergency Management Division (SCEMD) strives to be an accomplished and innovative leader in minimizing the loss of life and property from all-hazard events. To assist in the division’s mission, staff have implemented a spatial approach and integrated geographic information system (GIS) technology across their organization. SCEMD’s expanded spatial approach included a culture shift, integrating imagery and remote sensing with the division's GIS deployment, providing tools to decision-makers, and building recovery response on a GIS foundation.

At SCEMD, the entire organization embraces GIS, and spatial thinking is central to workflows. Staff needed to scale their geospatial operations/strategy, and a pinnacle moment occurred when they began using ArcGIS Enterprise. SCEMD now uses GIS to support mitigation, public assistance, individual assistance, response, and recovery efforts.

“I saw there was a need here for more geospatial work,” said Eryne Sheffield, GIS manager at SCEMD.

Achieving this level of success with scaling the division’s GIS program started with the SCEMD team’s organizing its approach to managing accounts, license usage, storage, and credits to create a strong geospatial system.
 

The catalyst for integrating imagery and remote sensing with the division’s GIS was Tropical Storm Debby. In 2024 during Tropical Storm Debby, the division had to do more with geospatial tools and analytics due to the impacts of flooding and the need for response. Using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data from ICEYE, the team implemented ArcGIS Dashboards. Using Dashboards, the team created a dashboard to help internal and external stakeholders understand which buildings would be impacted, what types of structures were in the path of the storm, what the flood depths would be, and what parts of the community were at elevated flood risk.

SCEMD worked with ICEYE to refine the data release of the imagery to focus on key areas of interest. To get data that was focused on South Carolina, the ICEYE staff worked to target the SAR satellites to capture the areas where they knew there was flooding. SCEMD also added a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) flood layer to understand the predicted risk.

“There is so much more to integrating GIS and remote sensing and imagery. People are afraid of these capabilities until they realize, ‘Oh, there is a lot more usability of this than you know,’” Sheffield said.
 

The next step to utilizing and managing imagery was to collaborate with external supporting agencies to create a cohesive response. During Hurricane Helene, SCEMD partnered with the South Carolina State National Guard’s GIS group to create a dashboard that allows all supporting agencies to import their data to aggregate authoritative data for better decision-making.

Another area of concern regarding the flooding was Lake Lure, a lake in neighboring North Carolina. The lake had a high likelihood of cresting over and flooding the dam, heightening the risk of dam failure.

“When there were discussions being had around dam failure, I knew situational awareness was a need as well as a visual to help all the organizations responding,” Sheffield said.

The dashboard helped the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) understand where the dam could break and which structures would be affected. Sheffield’s team added scenario-planning layers to map out the most likely scenario versus a reasonable worst-case scenario.
 

The dashboards used during two hurricane activations were pivotal for SCEMD, as they illustrated the power and need for leveraging GIS technology and how it can be a vital tool for emergency response efforts.

During Hurricane Helene’s EOC activation, SCEMD received requests from different state agencies. The requesters wanted to visualize the power grid, find the geographic areas affected by power outages, identify the roads that were closed, locate debris, and determine how these elements were actively affecting residents.

As all emergency managers know, recovery is key to helping a community rebuild from any event. With the passing of Hurricane Helene, the SCEMD team focused on how to manage the debris mission. SCEMD collaborated with the South Carolina Department of Environmental Service (DES) and Clemson University. This collaboration provided data for debris management as well as to visualize the locations of not only solid-waste facilities, but also quarantine zones that are used to restrict the spread of invasive plant and insect species across the state.
 

The data was brought into a dashboard to visualize citrus trees; peach trees infected by phony disease; the presence of Asian long-horned beetles; and the areas impacted by debris. This dashboard was sent to county directors to help them stay aware of approved debris-management sites. It was equipped with information on where to take the debris, who was taking it, and which sites were currently active.

“I saw there was a need for applying GIS to how we think. I wanted to create something that would help people through this event and events in the future,” said Sheffield. “Our work went to key state agency leaders and all these different local emergency managers so they can understand how hurricanes were affecting them directly.”