Emergency Management Solution: Rapid, Scalable, Collaborative, Interactive, Interoperable, Dynamic...the list goes on

The very first sale of ERDAS TITAN was to NVision Solutions, a data provider in Bay St. Louis that faced firsthand the aftermath of Katrina. They really get TITAN and its broad utility in emergency management and response. Here’s why:

Disaster participants need ready access to real time data appropriate for situational awareness and managing a response. Communication and collaboration with other disaster participants is crucial to achieving situational awareness. Key decision-makers need a means to understand a common operational picture via reliable, up-to-date information. Data must be searchable, accessible and viewable across a broad spectrum of disaster workers using a broad array of applications. Data creators need to publish geoproducts with permissions from the field for direct and rapid delivery and not be hassled by format translations. Organizations need data ownership control of licensed data assets. Participants also need access to current content as well as tie into historic and pre-disaster data and content already made available via various data management and delivery solutions.

TITAN is utilized in a disaster to rapidly enable multitudes of stakeholders to dynamically publish and consume geospatial data and location-based content in one online, collaborative network. Users consume data from a variety of public and private sources and into a variety of virtual globe, internet and rich client applications. Data creators are empowered to publish and share data with permissions in field offices or directly from their laptops in the field. TITAN also provides a virtual globe experience where users can create a ‘MyWorld’ with location-based content and geodata and, with the click of a button, share that MyWorld with permissions to other users on the Network. Data is delivered via geospatial web services, ensuring protection of digital ownership rights.

That’s a lot of utility for emergency management and response in this data sharing application.

More details:

• TITAN is a scalable, dynamic, rapidly deployable, online, real-time data sharing solution, supporting data publishing and delivery into many geospatial applications.
• TITAN enables “real time” shared viewing of a common operating picture vital to effective communication during an emergency response.
• Users can create and share a ‘MyWorld’, a geographically enabled space to upload data, set permissions, and share content with other network users. This ‘geospatial presentation space’ means sharing crucial geospatial data, notations, images and other location-based content in a collaborative, interactive 3D space and with thousands of users across the globe. This feature plus instant messenger chat enables real time, effective communication and collaboration amongst disaster participants within a common operational picture.
• Using TITAN authors of data become servers of data, publishing geoproducts immediately with permissions and from the field.
• Data publishing is facilitated while digital ownership rights are protected. TITAN enables ingestion of data in various file formats and delivers data via different means including geospatial web services (e.g. WMS), which means that only a portrayal of the data is distributed and the data owner still has full control over the actual dataset.
• Data consumers are enabled to rapidly consume data from unlimited public and private sources, directly into a variety of applications including Google Earth, Microsoft Virtual Earth, ERDAS IMAGINE, ArcMap, ArcGIS Explorer, MapInfo, GeoMedia, AutoCad and more.
• TITAN is interoperable and can be used in conjunction with static, centralized data stores and solutions, but does not need to rely only on static, centralized data stores!
• A TITAN GeoHub enables internal and external permission-based data distribution for disaster management. With a GeoHub, stakeholders can rapidly be enabled to participate in publishing and consuming data. A GeoHub is ideal for implementation at a local government operations center or state EOC, yet flexible and sturdy enough to be set up and configured quickly and run from a field office.
• The TITAN solution is a scalable solution and provides support for large numbers of users over a broad geography.
• Users can connect via a cell phone, air card and laptop to the ERDAS TITAN Network (this has been proven repeatedly by our customer NVision Solutions)