Sharing data in a crisis-State and local groups work on interoperability

"The technology has come a long way, but getting the people and organizations to build trust between each other is the tough part," Lehan says. "They are coming to the table now, and that is a big step forward."

Linking public health districts

As tornadoes ripped through the Commonwealth of Kentucky in February 2008, ongoing efforts to link the state’s 56 local public health districts started to pay off.

Kentucky recently started using Emergency Services Integrators’ WebEOC software, a critical incident management tool that local public health and emergency management teams can log into over the Web to relay their needs to the state's EOC when they are overwhelmed.

During the tornadoes, the software helped with situational awareness about schools that were damaged, and coordinated resource requests regarding open shelters.

"We are using WebEOC as a common operating platform for local officials to feed real-time health and medical data," says Drew Chandler, IT and communications coordinator for the Kentucky Department for Public Health.

The state is also starting to work on integration between WebEOC and its own Web-based GIS tool called the Kentucky Event Mapping and Analysis Portal, which can show 250 categories of infrastructure, including abandoned railroad beds that might be used as roads during an emergency. Chandler says WebEOC will also soon be integrated with EM System, software designed to improve real-time health system inventory resource allocation, as well as patient and evacuee tracking.

"People used to refer to the state EOC as a black hole because it was hard to get information once you were there, but not anymore," Chandler says. "Because everyone’s on the same platform, it has opened up communication between agencies."

Mapping power

When the city of Anaheim first pulled data sources together into its EVOC portal, officials recognized something was missing. "We decided there was a little too much textual information and that it was a little dry," David Brown says, "but we found that projecting the information visually using mapping tools was very helpful."

Other state and local EOCs have realized the same thing and placed an emphasis on mapping tools. Officials in Virginia are deploying the Emergency Management Mapping Application (EMMA), a Web-based tool developed at Towson University in Maryland. Built on ArcIMS software from ESRI, EMMA integrates with WebEOC, the crisis management software used by the Virginia Department of Emergency Management.

Already deployed in Virginia by the city of Richmond, Albemarle County and the city of Charlottesville EOCs, EMMA is being tested at the state EOC this spring, says Sam Hall, geospatial projects manager for the Virginia Geographic Information Network, a division of the Virginia Information Technologies Agency.

The power of EMMA is to add a geospatial element to two types of data, Hall explains. The first is a foundation level—things that don’t change quickly such as roads, utilities and county boundaries, for instance. The second type is operational data about current incidents such as power outages or areas impacted by flooding. An EOC may have a list of shelters open and accepting people, Hall explains. "EMMA allows emergency managers to see those on a map," he says, "and how they relate to other factors such as road closures or first-responder resources."

Hall says there are still many questions about integrating GIS data sets from players around the commonwealth of Virginia. How do they share data between three instances of EMMA? How can the date of other local GIS teams be added to the statewide effort, and how will those groups access EMMA?

Hall believes the move toward a GIS service-oriented architecture (SOA) is part of the answer. SOA can break down barriers to sharing GIS data, he says.

"A county such as Fairfax County in Virginia may have robust GIS data, but we have to find ways to publish it via Web services so it can be consumed by the feds or the state or other jurisdictions around the state," Hall explains. "We don’t want to have to ask them for a CD of all their data or to have to replicate it in our system. We might have 130 localities using GIS, and the operational data is key. We want real-time data sharing."

For instance, in a power outage, emergency officials want real-time data about where citizens are without power. Traditionally, that involves calling multiple power companies, getting reports and then mapping that information, then starting all over again on the calls to keep the information up to date.

"We are working with the power companies on Web services that will make that data available to authorized emergency management officials who need it," Hall says.

Despite the multitude of challenges they face, state and local governments have made some important progress on sharing data in emergency situations, because they realize how important an issue it is, notes Drew Sachs of James Lee Witt & Associates, "but it takes money and resources, new computer systems and sometimes the creation of new organizations to make it happen."