Integrating GIS Data for More Effective Disaster Response

In the chaotic aftermath of a disaster, a GIS disaster response team must quickly integrate location-based data provided by multiple agencies, and make the results available to other teams and organizations, thinks Dean Hintz, senior consultant and presenter from Safe Software.

The challenge facing responding organisations is that most of this data is not immediately usable with their GIS tools. The data may be in a variety of different map scales and coordinate systems, and it often spans a wide range of data structures, formats and standards - from vector to raster, from spatial to attribute only or text, and from open standards such as GML, WFS and WMS, to de-facto and proprietary standards. For example, during the response phase of a disaster, a GIS team may need to plan an effective strategy using basemap data in ESRI Shapefiles, engineering data in MicroStation, topological data in GML, and flood extent data in WFS. In order for a GIS system to use these diverse data sources, the data first needs to be translated into a common format or data structure. This can waste critical time if the team is hand coding the required data transformations, or relying on tools that deal with only a limited number of formats. Safe Software's presentation will use a hypothetical disaster response scenario to show how spatial ETL tools can face other approaches by rapidly integrating diverse source data into a common model. In addition, the presentation will demonstrate how this technology plays a role in distributing data to response teams.

Safe Software's presentation will take place on 22^nd August at 10:30 AM in the Monroe West room at the Hilton Washington.