Best practices and tips to improve your structure and damage assessment mapping.
This article is intended to supplement (and not replace) the Knowledge Base articles for adding, editing, and copying to the map with best practices and tips to improve your structure and damage assessment mapping.
The Triage, Wildfire Risk, and Damage Assessment layers are a great place to capture and share important information in Intterra to assess structures before, during, and after an incident to meet agency needs. They reduce the overall effort it takes to collect and share important information.
See Home Risk Workflow for more information.
Have a Plan!
- What's your current process for collecting and sharing assessment data? Is it working? How will Intterra compliment your current process?
- Consider developing a HowTo Guide and training plan for your agency if consistency is important to your agency.
Focus on the High Priority Data to Collect
- Especially when it comes to Damage Assessments, what information do you need to collect to complete required agency reports? There are a large number of form entries available - these can be used to clearly communicate to field collectors what is needed.
Focus on the High Priority Areas to Collect
- High-risk WUI communities? Community interest?
- Can collection be done simultaneously with other assessments, such as wildfire preplans, weed inspections, etc.?
- What level of homeowner engagement do I need? Outreach and sign-up for site visits? Simple notification of assessments being done in area? None?
Good Mapping Practices
Consistency is important. Follow agency guides or instructions.
Photos are an important part of any assessment. You can take up to five photos per assessment. Here are some TIPS:
- Take photos from your device camera app and add it to an assessment from your device gallery. You have the option on mobile devices, both in Intterra and the Field Tool, to add a photo directly from the camera in the app or from your device gallery. Both work, but taking photos from your device app keeps a copy of the photo outside Intterra for future use and easy management, and also allows for simple editing of the photo before adding it to the assessment, if desired.
- For Risk Assessments, the first photo taken will be displayed in the reports.
Monitor for Consistency
The key to having usable and consistent data is having a plan that involves continually monitoring what is being collected.