Local Innovation Works

DLAD Southern Oregon Summer 2023 Emergency Data Collection Plan

Situation 

If during the summer of 2023, a natural disaster hits Jackson County before the DLAD program is launched, we do have a prototype that may be able to begin the process of capturing the name and contact information for each disaster affected person.

I will be away for the entire summer as I am a climate refugee myself, the heat and smoke that have become common in Southern Oregon summer are not compatible with my physical health.  So local leadership will be essential to successfully recording who’s been affected.

If you are willing to volunteer in the case of a disaster this summer, please reach out to join the DLAD Vanguard.

Data Collection Tool 

Use this link to connect people to the survey for self registration. https://forms.gle/16zxrjP52Woudp9G9 

QR Code for the short url above

Steps 

The following steps would be required to meet the goal of collecting information on each survivor of the disaster.

  1. Permission: Reach out to disaster response and social service organizations actively responding to the disaster to arrange permission to collect data on survivors who pass through their service points.
  2. Collect: Arrange volunteers to collect data using the prototype Google form (below) in the disaster affected area itself and at busy points of service – the Jackson County Expo, etc.
    1. Complete Set: Focus first on capturing as complete a set of data as possible.  The next step will be to verify the disaster-affected status of each record.  Designing this process will be an early challenge.  
    2. Trust team: Reach out to trust team organizations to pull data in from every corner of the disaster affected community possible.
    3. Fraud: Nb. Unfortunately, fraud is a reality of disasters.  We want to meet all legitimate needs but focus resources on those affected by this disaster rather than chronic challenges. But being over zealous is probably not necessary except with the most scarce of resources.
  3. Validate: Arrange a volunteer or team to watch the data for duplicates and missing data
  4. Iterate: Organize an ad hoc technical team to make well-considered decisions about data structure and validation rule changes.
  5. Develop: Once volunteers are busy collecting data, then the Development Team can begin backfilling capacity, both organizational and financial to fulfill the larger mission of DLAD.
    1. Some process notes from the 2020 Labor Day Fire response needs assessment that may prove useful to this effort. 
  6. Learn: One or two volunteers should interview everyone involved in the effort to collect lessons learned so they can make our efforts more effective and so that we can share those learnings across the region.

Hopefully these plans will not be needed, but if you would be willing to help, please reach out to add your name to the list of intrepid souls in the DLAD Vanguard.  

In case we must swing into action, please reach out to me if I can be of any assistance remotely.  

[Reach Out button]

To maintain situational awareness of the wildfire situation this summer, here’s a very helpful page: https://www.weather.gov/wrh/fire?wfo=mfr 

Here’s some historical information on California wildfires, some of which spread into Southern Oregon.