–Jason Mortelliti –
Marketing Specialist
jmortelliti@gfnet.com

Geospatial technology is changing the way government agencies cope with disaster management efforts. During an emergency or for day-to-day operations, geospatial technology enhances situational awareness and offers a common operating picture of critical information to support transportation logistics, data fusion, incident management, information sharing, and collaboration. GeoDecisions®, an information technology company specializing in geospatial solutions based out of Harrisburg, Pa., is leading the way in this arena with its patented IRRIS® technology.

IRRIS is an Internet portal to a variety of live and operational infrastructure information. The system information is generated from more than 450 spatial data sets, including current data on roads, bridges, tunnels, road conditions, construction, and near-real-time weather, traffic reports, and various video feeds. The system integrates and then displays the information in a map format, enabling users to perform a variety of analysis, reporting, and querying functions to realize increased control and visibility.

Working closely with federal agencies, GeoDecisions developed IRRIS to be an open system. In this way, IRRIS can be easily customized to integrate data from various sources and formats, such as relevant agency information, to meet the needs of individual users. The ability to integrate, query, view, and overlay data from various sources and formats makes IRRIS technology a powerful tool for government agencies in disaster management situations.

For instance, maps produced from IRRIS technology can display an array of static and dynamic features, such as road and weather conditions, critical infrastructure, incident locations, schools, hospitals, low mobility populations, bridges, and waterways. When a natural disaster occurs, municipal, county, state, and federal agencies can utilize these thematic maps to display and declare disaster areas.

Agencies can use IRRIS technology to preplan or re-route emergency or government vehicles to avoid changes in weather conditions, traffic accidents, congestion, and road construction. They can also identify the safest and most effective routes to use into and out of a disaster area in crisis situations. For example, if an area is flooded or roads are closed due to a natural disaster, IRRIS can enable users to determine the safest and most efficient alternatives to re-route shipments into or out of the affected area. In fact, IRRIS provides access to more than 1,400 route and port cameras showing up-to-the-minute pictures of roadways or ports to aid in near-real-time routing.

IRRIS technology was originally developed and deployed in 1999 to support the U.S. Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command Transportation Engineering Agency (SDDCTEA) in its core mission to improve the global deployment of U.S. Armed Forces in support of the National Military Strategy. However, IRRIS has been effective for everyday use and to support national events as well. Agencies such as SDDCTEA, the U.S. Transportation Command, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Army National Guard use the system to coordinate the movement of military cargo for hurricane disaster recovery efforts, wildfire response activities, and other day-to-day operations.

With IRRIS, disaster recovery agencies can quickly identify supply routes to disaster-stricken areas and effectively coordinate the movement of shipments to food distribution centers, emergency response locations, and other relevant destinations.

Today, IRRIS uses the latest Web, geographic information system (GIS), intelligent transportation system (ITS), location-based services (LBS), global positioning systems (GPS), and radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to ensure effective law enforcement, logistics, emergency response, and management capabilities. IRRIS technology continually improves as new data becomes available and as logistics and emergency management functionality is requested. The strong partnership between the government, GeoDecisions, and users ensures that the application meets each user’s ever-changing needs.

Copyright © GeoDecisions, a division of Gannett Fleming, Inc., 2009. All rights reserved.