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Dana Libby hadn't been to Galveston, Texas since he was five-years-old and the retired police major couldn't exactly rely on his memory of the lay of the land to coordinate disaster relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Ike – especially with much of the city underwater.

Galveston was the site of what is often called the worst natural disaster in U.S. history – a massive hurricane in 1900.

Ike wasn't quite as ferocious, but it prompted Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas to call for an evacuation nonetheless. Still, 40 per cent of the island's residents were either unable or refused to leave. Stranded for nearly two weeks without power, water or sewer services, the situation quickly became a humanitarian crisis.

Libby, a volunteer captain with the Salvation Army, relied on mapping and simulation software developed by Everett, Wash.-based Depiction Inc. to plan his strategy to keep Galveston residents alive and well.

“You need to be able to see critical information on a map and pass it on to people,” he says. “Our response involved bringing in resources from an international pool and organizing multiple points of distribution and shelter provision. We also coordinated with the Red Cross and FEMA – it didn't matter what's on your shirt, everyone was there to serve.”

Libby discussed his experience with Depiction in Galveston at Toronto's World Conference on Disaster Management.

Depiction offers a dynamic geo-spatial mapping environment capable of processing data from many different sources, and that can also make the maps easy to share.

It's proving very valuable to those who must prepare for disaster relief, as well as an educational tool.

Depiction models what Toronto would look like if Lake Ontario were to suddenly rise 15 feet.

The software concept was born out of Microsoft's longest running product – Flight Simulator – that was finally cancelled this year after 28 years of updates. Depiction President Mike Geertsen spent 15 years at the Redmond-based software giant, including time as a product planner in the games group that developed Flight Simulator and Train Simulator.

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