Ready For The Storm
Last year’s series of hurricanes left the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and National Weather Service (NWS) systems straining to cope with the need for maps, data, and disaster relief.
Officials have been beefing up their IT systems with a relational database for geographic information systems (GIS) information, as well as a Web portal for storm information.
FEMA’s GIS database, formerly in a flat-file format, now makes use of a database management system that its Mapping and Analysis Center (MAC) uses in conjunction with GIS suites. The FEMA spatial database is consistent with the Geospatial Enterprise Architecture in use by FEMA’s parent department, the Department of Homeland Security, and makes use of Oracle Spatial 10.1.4 to generate maps and analysis with government and private-sector data.
“These maps are used all the way from the president of the United States to the end user in the field,” says FEMA CIO Barry West.
The MAC data will be a key component of the Geospatial Service Center, which the department is set to make available to DHS field operations staff and responders by Internet and wireless connections beginning this month.
Meanwhile, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s new Storm Tracker Web site, stormtracker.noaa.gov, brings together hurricane-related data that users previously had to attain from several different Web sites. Greg Hernandez, NWS Web page editorial manager, says, “I wanted to keep it simple and have a user interface for someone who is Web-savvy enough not to get in trouble, as well as information for the more sophisticated users who will surf deeper for wind speed and wave height [data].”
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from Government Computer News (07/05/05); Dizard III, Wilson P.