Services Mobile Wildfire Damage Assessment App

About the Program

Category: Risk and Emergency Management (Best in Category)

Year: 2019

San Diego County’s Planning & Development Services (PDS) developed a custom mobile application to be used on smart phones in the field during a wildfires to collect critical damage assessment information for damaged and destroyed structures and vehicles to support the fire recovery process. The mobile app allows damage assessment teams to collect information electronically and associate the information with a GPS location in the field to get immediate and real-time detailed results to office recovery staff for analysis and evaluation while the teams are still in the field collecting damage assessment data.Before the mobile app, PDS teams would use paper forms to write and collect reports, which is time consuming and often difficult in field conditions. Office staff needed to wait for the forms to be returned to the office before they could be manually processed by typing the data into computer systems. The mobile app allows for much more efficient and accurate data collection, and office staff can see and process data as it is submitted on a map indicating the locations of damaged structures without delay.