The Warren County Emergency Management Agency has been notified that the application submitted by that agency to the State Homeland Security Program (SHSP) Enhancing Community Preparedness and Resilience (ECPR) grant program has been selected for funding in the amount of $15,595.63. Jim Sharp, emergency management director for Warren County, said the funds will be used to purchase software that will enhance the county’s overall damage and needs assessment capabilities in the event of a disaster.

“If a community has been impacted by a disaster, a rapid and accurate damage assessment is critical. Not only does it enable one to determine the immediate needs of the community (Who is without utilities? Who needs shelter? What does our critical infrastructure look like?) but it’s also a cornerstone of many other functions,” Sharp said. “Damage assessment helps determine what resources are needed, the priorities of those resources, and the method(s) of delivery. Damage assessment establishes the foundation for quantifying damage and loss monetarily, which is a component that is evaluated when determining whether or not a county would be included in any Federal Disaster Declaration.”

The software being purchased is called Cartegraph, which is a multi-functional, commercially available product. Sharp said the software was in use after major flooding along the Mississippi river in 2019.

“I was Lincoln County’s Emergency Management Director during the 2019 flooding, and Cartegraph helped substantially with damage assessment. The software tracked individual projects by location and automatically collated costs in materials, costs in hours worked, and costs in equipment assigned,” Sharp said. “When the time came for damage assessment costs to be submitted to FEMA, the FEMA team was handed a flash drive instead of reams of paperwork. It accelerated that process.”