Successful OGC Demonstration Launches FEMA Hazard Mapping Framework”

June 18, 2002

Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

Wayland, MA -- The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announced that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) working with OGC and industry partners, has developed and made operational a technology framework for the sharing of geographic data related to natural hazards.OGC's FEMA-sponsored Multi-Hazard Mapping Initiative Phase 1 (MMI-1) concluded with a successful demonstration on May 9, 2002 of a standards-based framework for discovery, access, and distribution of multi-hazard map data.Federal, state and local agencies are now invited to participate in further development and growth of this information-sharing framework.

Until now, the diversity and non-interoperability of geographic information systems has hampered data sharing.Now the Internet can be used as a medium to locate, retrieve and exploit multi-hazard map data from many different organizations, regardless of their software vendor.One MMI-1 demonstration scenario depicted development of a land use plan combining multi-source information about land use, population, transportation, earthquake susceptibility, historical data on faults, tsunamis, and wildfires.The second scenario demonstrated how flood maps and maps of roads, hazard probabilities, demographics and historic storm paths could be rapidly accessed from different organizations to aid hurricane response efforts.

Geospatial technology providers CubeWerx, Compusult, ESRI, Harvard Design and Mapping (HDM), IONIC, MapInfo and SAIC engaged in the consensus-based development and testing of this legacy-compatible interoperability framework.FEMA's online HazardMaps resource represents one of the technologies resulting from the MMI initiative.It can be viewed at http://www.hazardmaps.gov

FEMA invites state, local, and federal agencies to partner in improving and expanding this framework.Interested agencies and constituencies are invited to apply to participate in a Community Advisory Group (CAG).Agencies can contribute data to be hosted on the HazardMaps site, or they can make their data available as an online service by means of servers that implement interfaces based on OGC's OpenGIS® Specifications.To register your interest, use the "contact us" button at http://www.hazardmaps.gov.

ABOUT CUBEWERX INC.
Founded in 1996, CubeWerx has been developing standard-based off the shelf software products (SCOTS) in response to Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) requirements for interoperable information infrastructures. CubeWerx is an innovative software company whose expertise includes development, marketing and selling of Web Services and Spatial Warehousing software products. These products and other location-based software product components support the most demanding requirements for the integration, access, and management of very large volumes of Spatial Data over the web. CubeWerx products such as CubeXPLOR, CubeSERV and CubeSTOR were developed using open and interoperable specifications from the Open GIS Consortium. These products allow organizations responsible for Geospatial data to respond to their most demanding client requirements and offer them on-line Web services in a multi-vendor products environment. More information on CubeWerx is available on the Internet at www.cubewerx.com.

For more information please contact:
Edric Keighan (CubeWerx)
Tel.: (819) 771-8303 x207
E-mail

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