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Continuity Atlas translates COOP planning into GIS language, operational reality, and practical steps. You don't need to have read a FEMA document to use this tool, but reading this first will make every phase click faster.
A Continuity of Operations plan shows how your department keeps delivering essential GIS services when normal conditions break down: power loss, staff loss, system failure, facility inaccessibility.
GIS Managers, Coordinators, and Analysts who support operations or public safety and need to document how their work continues when things go wrong.
This tool guides your thinking. It doesn't test your knowledge. The prompts surface what you know, and flag what you need to find out.
When conditions are not normal, GIS becomes more important. Not less.
During a hurricane, flood, or major incident, GIS is expected to support emergency operations, maintain situational awareness, and keep critical data and services available. The disruption doesn't reduce that expectation. It intensifies it.
"We can't see where our first responders are. Our maps are down."
"We're navigating by paper maps from 1995."
These are the consequences continuity planning exists to prevent.
GIS depends on servers, cloud services, software licenses, datasets, data pipelines, staff knowledge, and partner systems. When one breaks, everything downstream stalls. A continuity plan maps those chains before an incident reveals them the hard way.
Everything in the builder traces back to one of these.
Identify the GIS work that cannot stop, because operations, public safety, or leadership depend on it. Not everything is essential. Knowing what is gives you a planning target.
Emergency mapping support, 911 addressing, parcel data maintenance: these have immediate downstream consequences if they stop.
Map the people, software, hardware, data, partner support, and documentation your GIS department needs to function. You cannot plan for loss of something you haven't identified.
Your ArcGIS Pro license is tied to one machine. Your parcel data lives on a network drive. Your emergency mapper is one person. All three are dependencies.
Break down how critical GIS work actually gets done, step by step, input by input. Understand what each step relies on. See where things break when a key input disappears.
Emergency mapping: who activates it, what systems are required, what happens if ArcGIS Online is unreachable, what does the fallback look like?
Surface single points of failure, undocumented processes, and system dependencies before they surface during an incident. A gap you find in planning is a gap you can fix.
Only one person knows the platform admin credentials. There is no offline copy of the critical data layers. The backup laptop has an expired license.
Define the backups, alternate workflows, fallback processes, and cross-training that close the gaps. A risk without a mitigation is just a documented problem.
Pre-stage offline maps quarterly. Cross-train a second staff member. Designate the EOC as your alternate worksite. Store credentials in a sealed envelope with IT.
Eight phases, each building on the last.
Establish your mission, stakeholder expectations, and the legal/policy drivers that make continuity non-optional.
Document every GIS service you deliver and identify which are critical vs. deferrable.
Break down the step-by-step workflows behind your most critical services, including degraded-mode fallbacks.
Rank what must keep running during a disruption. Not everything can be a priority.
Map every person, system, and dataset under normal and continuity conditions. The gaps are your vulnerabilities.
Identify threats, score likelihood and impact, document mitigations. This drives your strategy.
Define activation authority, alternate worksites, succession, and technology fallbacks.
Build the training, exercise, and maintenance program that keeps the plan real over time.
Most GIS departments don't have a complete continuity plan. That's not a failure. It's why this tool exists.
The goal is a stronger understanding of your operations and a usable draft, not perfect day-one performance. Start with what you know. Let the prompts expose what matters.