Geocove Plays Major Role Assessing Tornado Damage in Tuscaloosa, Alabama

ORLANDO Fla., --- When massive tornadoes ravaged southeastern states recently, emergency crews from Geocove, Inc., an Orlando technology firm that provides GIS software and implementation solutions to government agencies and corporations nationwide, sprung into action.

Geocove’s specialists played a major role helping Tuscaloosa, Ala. city officials assess the extent of tornado damage just days after arriving, said Karyn Tareen, president and chief executive officer at Geocove.

“The city of Tuscaloosa asked Esri for aid, who in turn requested Geocove to provide damage assessment support,” Tareen explained.

Geocove donated more than 100 hours of support utilizing Geocove’s ARM360 software suite that assessed, reported and mapped residential and commercial structures damaged by the storm.

Altogether, 41 people were confirmed killed as a result of the storm in Tuscaloosa and nearly 300 deaths were reported in one of the worst storms in the region’s history.

The EF-4 tornado that touched down in Tuscaloosa was approximately a mile wide and more than 80 miles long, Tareen said.

By loading existing GIS data into the ARM360 application, Tuscaloosa was able to rapidly and accurately determine not only the number of structures affected by the storm but also enabled Geocove to put a dollar figure on the storm damage to assist in planning for recovery efforts and requests for adequate funding.

“When the damage grid is that sensitive, it would take weeks to compile the assessments using standard protocols,” Tareen said.

Geocove specialists provided a tool that coupled satellite images with GIS databases to produce a thorough preliminary damage assessment within days, Tareen said.

Jeffrey Motz, GIS Manager for the City of Tuscaloosa said Tareen and Geocove hit the ground running by showing up with an established system and experience in disaster mitigation. “Karyn worked tirelessly to configure the system, train users and collect field data,” Motz said. “She saved us from reinventing the wheel—even planning for a worst case scenario, we never would have imagined this event would be as devastating as it has been but ARM360 kept us aware of every situation immediately after the event and through the recovery phase,” Motz explained.

Alabama Forestry Commission Plan Section Chief Brad Lang, who headed the Tuscaloosa Work Unit of the Incident Management Team said Geocove’s technology was invaluable.

“Geocove was able to summarize and map current real time data to give us an excellent field overview and assessments of damage severity, the value of damaged homes and current photographs of referenced points of interest,” Lang said.

Geocove develops and markets proprietary technology that utilizes GIS data to provide accurate damage assessments in the event of natural disasters such as fires and weather events.

Geocove is a member of the University of Central Florida Business Incubation Program in the Central Florida Research Park near the UCF campus in East Orange County.

About GeoCove
Geocove, Inc. provides scalable assessment solutions built using the power of GIS across a multitude of industries. The Geocove team has extensive experience in providing assessment, reporting and mapping tools for emergency management, building officials, public health and other government agencies as well as utilities and other private industries. Geocove, Inc., a privately held corporation located in central Florida, is an authorized partner of Esri, the world’s leading GIS software provider.

About the UCF Business Incubation Program
Since its founding in 1999, the UCF Business Incubation Program has helped more than 160 emerging companies (including more than 100 current clients) create over $800 million in annual revenue and more than 1,600 new jobs with an average salary of $59,000. With nine facilities across the Greater Orlando community, the Business Incubation Program is a collaboration in economic development between the University of Central Florida, Orange County, the City of Orlando, Seminole County, the City of Winter Springs, The City of Sanford, Lake County, the City of Leesburg, Osceola County, the City of Kissimmee, City of St. Cloud, Volusia County and the Florida High Tech Corridor Council. Please visit www.incubator.ucf.edu.