GISjobs.com – It All Starts Here

Brooke Hatcher

Seattle, WA, USA

Brooke W Hatcher
Portfolio: https://www.atlas-brooke.com/?_sm_nck=1
Linkedin: https://bit.ly/3kV67c5

Imagery and Geospatial Engineer
UX Geospatial Design
Remote Sensing Data Scientist
Geographer - Storytelling at the Community Level

URSIA Vanguard Cabinet Member, Outreach Chair 23’ - 25’
Geospatial World's 50 Rising Stars 2023
xyHt 24 Young Geospatial Professionals to Watch in 2024
American Association of Geography Profile 2024

GIS professional with extensive experience in designing and implementing geospatial workflows, spatial analysis, and data integration using the ArcGIS platform and open-source data. Proven ability to develop cartographic products, conduct spatial analysis, create reproducible GIS workflows and scripts in Python, and support knowledge capture. Seeking a GIS Solutions Engineer role to advance cultural heritage monitoring, open-source intelligence (OSINT) integration, remote sensing, and spatial intelligence delivery to support humanitarian, infrastructure, and civil operations.

Skills
GIS Software & Platforms: ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Enterprise, ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Image Analyst, ArcGIS Knowledge Graph
Programming/Scripting: Python (ArcPy), SQL
Data Sources: GDELT, NASA FIRMS, Sentinel-1, Maxar G-EGD imagery, OpenStreetMap, Census data.
Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis: Spatial and temporal change detection, raster math, hot spot analysis, overlay analysis, network analysis, terrain analysis, predictive analysis.
OSINT & Imagery Exploitation: Open-source data fusion, imagery interpretation, feature extraction, pattern analysis.
Cartography & Visualization: UX Figma, Canva, Esri Suite (dashboards, business analyst, production mapping, story maps..)iinformation graphics.
Project Management: Agile workflows: scrum, Microsoft Teams, Trello, Anaconda, GitHub
Languages: Arcpy, Python (Geopandas, Fiona, Rasterio, Shapley, Cartopy and Matplotlib), JS ArcGIS JavaScript for API, Arcade, R, SQLite.

Experience

Geospatial UX Design and Data Visualization Expert November 2024 - May 2024, FEMA Risk Map - New Light Technologies

Conducted user-centered design research to enhance FEMA employee management dashboards.Migrated problematic Microsoft Power Apps to flexible ESRI tools, including Dashboards and Field Maps.
Designed and implemented gallery-style literature reviews for FEMA’s RISK Project.


UX Cartographic Designer. January 2024 – December 2024. Census Center for Excellence - New Light Technologies
-

Led Agile sprints for the Census Economic Health Report tool, integrating diverse geospatial datasets.
- Designed user interfaces to visualize economic and community health data.
- Created distribution and temporal statistical charts in collaboration with the Census mathematics team.

Geospatial Full Stack Engineer. January 2023 - May 2024. National Business Economic Operation Center (NBEOC - FEMA) - New Light Technologies

Utilized geospatial datasets on demographics, hazards, structures, essential infrastructure, and real-time operational telemetry to support FEMA leadership in resource allocation and disaster response.

Developed and implemented scalable cloud-based geospatial data pipelines, ensuring efficient access, storage, and processing of real-time operational datasets.

Authored SOPs on architecture and workflows and delivered training sessions and webinars to support users for BEAD dashboard application lifecycle, data updates, UI interface functionality, and resources.

Accomplishments:

Showcased BEAD Telemetry Dashboard: Displayed Foursquare-powered disaster insights at the ESRI UC as a top disaster response interface.

Foursquare Dataset Integration: Identified Foursquare as superior telemetry data for FEMA's first nationwide economic analysis project.

Optimized POI Data: Oversaw updates to FEMA’s POI feature service, implementing tiling and caching for rapid data access.

Global Data Scripting: Developed workflows to pull critical infrastructure data from Data Axle, Foursquare, OpenStreetMap, and Google API, ensuring scalability and compatibility across formats.

Economic Impact Indicator: Created disaster response metrics by integrating diverse datasets, including demographics, employment, and supply chain data.
NAICS Code Analysis: Enhanced economic insights by matching census attributes with business NAICS codes.
Advanced Spatial Techniques: Utilized kriging and Landscan for precise mapping of business locations and data integration at various scales.

Remote Sensing and Geospatial Engineer Lead. 2018 - 2023, FEMA Regional Geospatial Office (RGO) - New Light Technologies, Washington D.C

Responsible for designing story maps, dashboards, and experience builders to display the impacts of incidents on communities' infrastructure, structures, and demographics so that FEMA leadership could plan where to send resources.
Built AI tools and damage proxy indicators to assess tornado and wildfire impacts using remote sensing and big data change detection and unique indices to extract damage severity at four levels (affected, minor, major, destroyed)

Evaluation research of unique damage proxy indices for floods, tornados, and wildfire to determine best suited for unique incidients, phase of event, and location in the united states.

Designed predictive risk and impact indices tailored for disaster response communities, leveraging Census ACS 5-Year Estimates to capture unique location-based metrics for modeling probable risk and potential impact.

Enhanced data granularity by integrating Landscan population centroids with Census Block Groups, providing accurate and detailed risk insights for FEMA'S TEMPO platform.

Co-hosted a Planet Federal webinar showcasing NDVI-based workflows to map tornado damage and estimate impacted structures using Planet Imagery for FEMA.

Developed and implemented an enhanced Census data aggregation workflow using R and Tidyverse, standardizing geospatial datasets into uniform kilometer grid formats.

Served as the FEMA Structure Datasets Lead, managing critical geospatial datasets for parcels, infrastructure, building footprints, and damage assessments.

Established and managed vendor partnerships for real-time data feeds, including GasBuddy, Waze, Eagle-I, PENS, FCC DIRS, NASA Disasters, and NOAA NCEI. Oversaw API data ingestion into GeoEvent Server and led migration to ArcGIS Velocity for improved performance. These feeds were vital for assets' operational status updates under the Lifeline Framework.

Developed a formal evaluation rubric to assess geospatial products based on accuracy, coverage, integration, cost, reliability, and community adaptability to support client decision-making and vendor selection.

This evaluation framework led to FEMA RGO's first aerial imagery acquisitions through partnerships with ICEYE and Nearmap and led to the adoption of FELT to enhance data communication and cartographic output.

Accomplishments:
Remote Sensing Innovation Workshop: Organized FEMA RGO's first workshop to showcase cutting-edge remote sensing products for disaster response.

Isolated Risk Index Development: Created an index using Census TIGER and ACS datasets to model risks related to healthcare, housing, income, and demographics.

Enhanced Structures Data: Optimized FEMA’s damage reporting systems by improving structure-related geospatial data.

ArcGIS MarketPlace Tool: Designed the Isolated Communities and Facility Allocation Tool for disasters and prepared it for ArcGIS MarketPlace integration.
Predictive Risk Modeling Metrics: Identified 13 critical variables, leveraging ACS 5-Year Estimates, to enhance FEMA's risk models.

National Structures Conflation: Led efforts to aggregate Lightbox parcel data with Oak Ridge National Labs' building structures for nationwide datasets.

Limited English Proficiency Metric: Enhanced FEMA’s risk models by incorporating Census data on non-English speakers for Urban Search and Rescue efforts.

Global City Resilience Platform: Designed ESRI-based geospatial architecture for the World Bank's City Resilience Program, supporting 30 African cities.

Tornado and Wildfire AI Models: Developed damage proxy AI models using optical imagery to assess disaster impacts on structures.

Vendor Imagery Services: Curated image services for FEMA’s Damage Assessments App, Incident Journals, and Lifeline Dashboards.

Earth Engine Flood Scripts: Created global scripts in Google Earth Engine to extract inundation layers from Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data.
Aerial Imagery Subscriptions: Procured and validated Vexcel aeri
al imagery and ICEYE SAR services for disaster response applications.
Imagery Uploader Training: Developed training materials for FEMA personnel to utilize Civil Patrol Imagery Uploader with AWS integration.

AI/ML Damage Model Repository: Installed and configured XView2 AI/ML damage models on FEMA's systems for operational use.

Geospatial Data Scientist. February 2024 – December 2024. Louisiana Department of Health, New Light Technologies
-

Developed predictive surge risk models for hurricane response using NOAA tidal data.
- Designed SQL schemas for cloud-based geospatial data integration.

GIS Analyst II. 2015 - 2018, MAXAR, Gaithersburg, MD.
QC/QA Analyst.

Utilized ERDAS tools to extract, correct, and conflate land cover rasters for VISNAV_HD and Enhanced Land Cover (ELC) NGA contract.
Selected to be on the FEMA APEX Program Research Team to develop an Observer Flood Extent product for the nation to understand the frequency of flooding using the USGS Landsat Library archive and applying Dynamic Surface Water Extent Index to extract flooded pixels for 10 unique geographic locations that experience flooding.

Education

Master in Geospatial Information Sciences and Technology 2017-2021. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC

Bachelor in Arts - Geography 2010 - 2014. University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, VA

Certifications

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)
GIS Certificate, University of Mary Washington (2014)
Top Secret Clearance (inactive)
Leadership Academy Certification - URISA 2024 Seattle, WA

PUBLICATIONS

Projects listed in Linkedin: https://bit.ly/3kV67c5
Master Portfolio: https://sites.google.com/ncsu.edu/gis-660-brooke-hatcher-portfol/home

Subraelu, P., Yagoub, M. M., Sefelnasr, A., Rao, K. N., Allamsatti, R. S., & Sherif, M. (2021). Sea-level Rise and Coastal Vulnerability: A Preliminary Assessment of UAE Coast through Remote Sensing and GIS. J. Coast Zone Manag, 24, 477.
Smith, F. G. F. , & Alexander, D. J. (2018).

Quantifying the Impact of 20-Year Flood Frequency on Land Cover Change Type. American Journal of Civil Engineering and Architecture, 6(1), 13-23.

A GIS-Based Tornado Damage Assessment Model for Emergency Response - 2020
Tornado Paper - 2020 Tuscaloosa.docx - Google Docs

“Assessing 25 Years of Urban Density Changes in the U.S.” APSRS, 2017.
“
Utilizing Living Atlas of The World at FEMA- Monitoring Wildfire Activity Sentinel 2”, ESRI Federal GIS Conference, 2019.
https://www.canva.com/design/DAF13lzLRzk/33ByqTTOKzacGC3eq4KtAA/view?utm_content=DAF13lzLRzk&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=editor

“Systematic Method for Prioritizing Satellite Data Collection at FEMA”, ESRI Federal GIS Conference, 2019.
https://www.canva.com/design/DAF13pjSY0Y/7m0z3A-_ZHQ29O1z0lePEQ/view?utm_content=DAF13pjSY0Y&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=editor

“FEMA Lifeline Operation Dashboard for ArcGIS 2020”, ESRI Federal GIS Conference, 2020.
https://www.canva.com/design/DAF13p3fjsg/CbMOPUMdULTiQ_B_7cokGA/view?utm_content=DAF13p3fjsg&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=editor

“Remote Sensing at Federal Emergency Management Agency - Use Case for Copernicus Products”, ESRI Federal GIS Conference - Interagency Remote Sensing Workshop, 2020
https://www.canva.com/design/DAF13rDJQvY/dbawfbdtOXpPkl55U4364g/view?utm_content=DAF13rDJQvY&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=editor

“FEMA Critical Infrastructure Monitoring with Real Time Data”, URISA GIS Pro, 2020
“ESRI Imagery Data Management Solution for Big Data – FEMA RGO”, ESRI User Conference, 2022.
https://www.canva.com/design/DAF13hFGXAA/_wL6OBUsIvE1Sq6YVgW51A/view?utm_content=DAF13hFGXAA&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=editor
“Integrating Cloud-Based Geoprocessing and AI Workflows Using Anaconda Navigator”, URIS GIS Pro, 2023.
https://www.canva.com/design/DAF13Q0jKYU/J4kkQhlNvtqmFHxowbAiqQ/view?utm_content=DAF13Q0jKYU&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=editor

“Prioritizing Risk and Building Resiliency for Climate Change & Disasters”, Geospatial World Forum, 2023.
https://www.canva.com/design/DAF13jDdOqA/Hzu7T_z_2CzqR23uV5vdbg/view?utm_content=DAF13jDdOqA&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=editor

“Data Deliberation: A Framework for Evaluating and Selecting Optimal Earth Observation and Geospatial Datasets for Disaster Risk Modeling”, AAG Accepted Abstract, 2024.

“Understanding and Addressing Racial Spatiality in the Outdoor Sport Industry: A Focus on Skiing in The Pacific NorthWest”, AAG Accepted Abstract, 2024.

FELT Mapping interface: User Experience Evaluation and Research
https://www.canva.com/design/DAGNGpNjerQ/U59XCO0b5wibE-ZA1HTgcQ/edit?utm_content=DAGNGpNjerQ&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton
Subraelu, P., Yagoub, M. M., Sefelnasr, A., Rao, K. N., Allamsatti, R. S., & Sherif, M. (2021). Sea-level Rise and Coastal Vulnerability: A Preliminary Assessment of UAE Coast through Remote Sensing and GIS. J. Coast Zone Manag, 24, 477.

Brooke Hatcher

Posted 2025-10-23 under Engineering