Location and analysis of emergency point of distributions (PODs) under hurricane Harvey flood conditions using POD locator.

Abstract

In 2010 and 2017, respectively, the manuscripts Location and Analysis of Emergency Management Point of Dis-tributions (PODS) for Hurricane Ike and Use of Geographical Information System Data For Emergency Management Points of Distribution Analysis With POD Locator 2.0 were published in the Journal of Emergency Management. These manuscripts described the use of the University of Houston POD Locator software to determine the location of Points of Distribution under emergency conditions. This software achieved a 46 percent improvement in POD loca-tions in comparison to those actually selected during the event. However, a limitation of those research efforts was the absence of the potential effects of flood waters as experienced in the Houston Harris County area during Hurri-cane Harvey in 2017. This research effort focuses on the effects of flood water in determining the location of different PODs under these conditions in comparison to the PODs identified by Hurricane Harvey. The results indicate a sta-tistically significant difference at an alpha level of 0.05 between using and not using flood data when determining the location of PODs. The use of flood data also yielded a 46.5 percent in travel distance reduction over the actual 26 POD locations chosen in Ike.