Local,
State, Provincial and Federal Governments Reveal the Power of Interoperability
for Critical Infrastructure ProtectionIf you took a walk outside in your city or town,
and detected a suspicious odor, perhaps caused by a leaking chemical,
how would local, state or provincial, all the way up to federal
responders share information to be sure there was no threat to public
safety? That’s the question that communities from all levels
of government, on both sides of the U.S./Canada border, came together
to explore in a demonstration organized as part of the Open GIS
Consortium’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Initiative
(CIPI). In addition to developing a reference approach to uniting
communities at different levels of government to share data, the
demonstration highlighted new specifications involving emergency
notification systems, and it illustrated a vision of data sharing
for the future.
The sponsors of this phase of the initiative include GeoConnections,
led by Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), the US Geological Survey
(USGS), and General Dynamics - Advanced Information Systems. CIPI-1
used OpenGIS® Specifications to establish a common understanding
of an emergency situation and coordinate incident response. The
sponsors, along with the City of Windsor, the Province of Ontario,
NRCan’s Centre for Topographic Information - Sherbrooke (CTIS),
Wayne State University, Wayne County GIS/IT, and Michigan Center
for Geographic Information, with data vendors Navigation Technologies
and GlobeXplorer contributing mapping data and online services.
USGS, NRCan and the State of Michigan set up Internet-based mapping
servers at different locations (Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Ottawa,
Ontario and Detroit, Michigan) for the project. Not only could the
different data be brought together, it could be brought together
from different hardware platforms - from mainframes to cell phones
- using software from a wide variety of vendors.
GlobeXplorer’s ImageConnect for WMS was used to seamlessly
integrate satellite and aerial imagery with data from other companies’
remote servers, all interactively and dynamically.
