Public Damage Assessment Form Description
LOCATION FEATURE
We use our standard Location Feature that allows users to use either structure data to assign the building location or to manually geocode the building location.
On the mobile application, we use data in the tax parcel and address data for a structure to drive the application to assign the correct type of damage assessment form.
Users can change the form if they observe indicators that the use category has changed since the last data update.
FACILITY DESCRIPTION FEATURE
FEMA now requires a Facility Description that includes:
- Name/Description
- Owner
- Category
- Purpose
- Primary Use
- Private Non-Profit designation
We added a Facility Value, which will be derived from customer data or manual input using customer determined cost basis. Facility value will be used with the Damage Category to calculate an initial damage estimate using the applications algorithm.
ASSESSMENT FEATURE
The Damage Assessment Feature has been significantly revamped to ensure capture of the data points FEMA specifies in the current Preliminary Damage Assessment Guide for Public Assistance Damage Claim.
FEMA has refined their PA Damage Assessment requirements to include a required indicator of whether a building/infrastructure was flooded or not.
In addition, FEMA now requires inputs on the actual cause of damage; in an attempt to better understand the insurance availability and coverage for the hazards and perils that impacted survivors.
Crisis Track recognizes that there is a high likelihood of buildings being impacted by multiple hazards in any given disaster; so we provide users with the capability to input up to three damage causes.
DAMAGE ESTIMATION FEATURE
The Preliminary Damage Assessment Guide indicates that FEMA will require more complete damage description information on the FEMA 90-80/90-81 form for assessments of Publicly owned buildings and infrastructure.
The level of detail requires descriptions of major components damaged (including damage dimensions for each component and site boundary location points. This is seemingly the level of detail previously provided in an initial Statement of Work submitted on a project worksheet.
No Component Information Added
Our customers are reporting wide variations between FEMA Regions in requiring this level of input. So we have added the capability to our assessment forms, but customers can opt not to use it during the initial assessment. The additional fields are hidden until a user √s “Add Component”
Component Information Data Inputs Visible
When a user √s “Add Component,” the required data input fields appear. Area and Volume are calculated within the app from the dimension inputs entered by the user.
Estimated Repair/Replacement Cost is manually entered.
User (typically at the EOC) will also make a determination of Work Type:
- Force Account
- Contract
- Mutual Aid
- MOU
- Force Account & Contract
- Donated Resources Additional Components can be added by the user by √ing “Add Second (or other ordinal descriptor) Component
The Total Component Cost is the sum of all Estimated Costs for all components that are added.
ADDITIONAL COSTS FEATURE
FEMA’s Preliminary Damage Assessment Guide also indicates inputs on estimated (Force Account) Labor, (Force Account) Equipment, (Force Account) Material, and/or Contract Costs be provided with PA Damage Assessments.
The Total Costs is the sum of Total Component Cost (taken from Damage Estimate section) + Labor Costs + Equipment Costs + Materials Costs + Contract Costs.
We have added these inputs to both the Desktop Console and Mobile Application Versions.
COMMUNITY FUNCTIONS IMPACT FEATURE
FEMA explicitly states that the Damage Assessment impact statement includes inputs on impact to community functions. Crisis Track decided to use the community lifeline concept that FEMA introduced several years ago. Our reasoning for doing this was two-fold. Most importantly, in our deep dive into the new requirements; there were several implicit linkages to the community lifeline concept in the discussion for this requirement.
Secondly, it provides a quick and easily trained methodology for obtaining field observations on community impact.
