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IMAGIN
If you have the time, the inclination, and the wherewithal, then gosh I hope you will come check out the Emergency Management and Public Safety forum at the IMAGIN annual conference this May in Lansing, Mi. I’ll be presenting on Thursday the 4th with some salacious details of public safety applications we’ve built here at IDV Solutions.

Rapturous Abstract
Spanning Scale: Driving Understanding and Action in Emergency Management Visualizations

Emergency management systems are increasingly moving into extensible and secure online environments where access, specialization, and collaboration are more readily achieved. As these systems, particularly the geographic component within them, gain confidence and market penetration, their contribution to the overall workflow of emergency managers is quickly evolving beyond the passive display of mapped data.
This presentation stems from solution development with several emergency management clients ranging from regional to federal to international levels. These organizations, while varying in size and mission, at their core wish to more effectively process and present data, enable their people to have a greater sense of understanding and empowerment, and equip them to undertake a more concrete actionable response. What are the similarities between clients of these scales? What are the differences?
Specific examples will be discussed including scale of focus, contextualization, cartographic options and implications, technology, tandem visualization tools, and design considerations.

People
Over the years, I’ve been struck by the similarity of the goals and requirements of Emergency Management / Public Safety applications, regardless of the variety of the scope and functions of those systems. Whether an emergency manager for a county or for a global entity, we’re all people, and in a crisis (or preferably before a crisis) folks need to get what’s going on, and take decisive and confident action. How could I put it any better than these guys…