Mapping the Mayhem : Software Program Pinpoints L.A. Riot Areas

Psomas & Associates owes much of its 46-year existence to the city of Los Angeles. The engineering firm has prospered by doing hundreds of land surveys for the city--laying the groundwork for skyscrapers, roads and hospitals.

So when riots wreaked havoc throughout the City of Angels four weeks ago, it was only natural that the company would want to lend a helping hand.

Next week, Psomas’ computerized mapping division in Costa Mesa is expected to deliver to Los Angeles a software program that will provide maps of the riot-affected areas with details of damaged and destroyed buildings. The program will also include the city’s cost estimates for each property loss.

The program, which Psomas is donating free of charge, will save the city valuable time by allowing it to quickly access riot information that it has gathered in reports, memos and other documents.

“Los Angeles is very important to Psomas,” said Jerry Wagner, project director of the company’s geographic information system (GIS) division in Costa Mesa. “What affects Los Angeles affects us. So when the rioting came up, we volunteered our services.”

City officials readily accepted the contribution.

“A number of companies have offered to provide services pro bono, but we haven’t figured out how to use them yet,” said Ralph Kennedy, chief deputy engineer for the city of Los Angeles. “But using GIS to assess fire damage immediately struck us as an excellent idea.”

The city gave Psomas aerial photographs of areas hit during the riots, as well as a long list of addresses where fires and vandalism occurred. Psomas has been pinpointing the hundreds of devastated structures on computerized street maps.

Summoned on the computer screen, for instance, a stretch of Vermont Avenue in South Los Angeles comes up dotted with orange flames--each symbol representing a fire.

“It helps us to identify the locations, ascertain the property lines and figure out the extent of damage,” Kennedy said.

The GIS program will be able to report damage estimates for individual buildings based on information supplied by the city. It also will compute the total dollar amount of damage in a particular neighborhood or council district to aid the city in its distribution of relief aid.

Wagner estimated that by project’s end, Psomas will have donated to Los Angeles about 80 hours of work worth more than $15,000.

The privately held engineering firm has 300 employees scattered among six offices: its Santa Monica headquarters, Costa Mesa, Riverside, Sacramento, Washington, and Heidelberg, Germany.

The 80-employee Costa Mesa branch oversees one of the firm’s mainstays--the GIS mapping program. With it, Psomas can sketch out everything from the number of fire hydrants on a block to the layout of sewer lines.

Used by engineering firms around the country, the geographic information system evolved over the past 15 years. Since Psomas added GIS services to its Orange County office in 1984, dozens of government agencies have contracted with the company for a variety of projects:

* The cities of Orange and Santa Ana have transferred their entire libraries of paper maps to computer databases. If Santa Ana officials, for example, need to know where the underground utilities are located on a particular street, they could get the information quickly on a computer screen.

* The Long Beach Police Department tracks crime on a mapping system to detect patterns. In one case, the police captured a burglar after using the program to study his modus operandi. The burglar repeatedly crawled through open windows on the same few neighborhood blocks.

* After the 1987 Whittier earthquake, that city hired Psomas to map 1,400 land parcels in the quake’s vicinity. The maps indicated structures affected by the temblor so that the city could evaluate the extent of damage. “We produced hordes of maps in 10 days’ time,” Wagner said.

* The German Railway is using Psomas as a consultant to help develop a GIS program to manage its facilities. “If a railway switch goes out in the middle of the night, personnel can call it up on the computer and find out who manufactured it and what parts (are needed) to take out in the field to repair it,” Wagner said.

The firm’s most enduring relationship, though, has been with the city of Los Angeles. And the city is very comfortable with Psomas.

“They’ve always been an easy company to work with,” Kennedy said.

Among other projects, the engineering firm is working under contract to update Los Angeles’ antiquated topography--compiling thousands of hand-drawn maps into one easily accessible computer program.

But Psomas executives also wanted to help the city in its time of need.

“We have a commitment to the area,” Wagner said. “We are not just ambulance-chasers looking for opportunities to make money. We have a responsibility to give something back to the city.”

Assessing LA

Once Psomas and the city of Los Angeles have completed the computerized mapping of areas devastated by fires and vandalism, city officials can quickly access information on a specific locale--be it one block or an entire council district. Information that will soon be at fingertips includes:

* Number of incidents of fires and/or vandalism in a defined area or district

* Extent of damage to a specific building, from 1% to 100%

* Dollar amount of damage

* Addresses of structures

* Structures still occupied

* Condemned structures

* Total amount of damage to a defined area--whether it is a certain street, a neighborhood or a council district

Source: Psomas and Associates