Local, State, Provincial and Federal Governments Reveal the Power of Interoperability for Critical Infrastructure Protection”

May 9, 2003

Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

Wayland, MA, -- If 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 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 U.S.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, and data vendors Navigation Technologies and GlobeXplorer contributed mapping data.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.

Initiative participants played different roles in the demonstration, from a mapping specialist at an emergency response center with access to powerful computers, to a police officer at the scene of the leak with a PDA, to emergency managers and journalists trying to get emergency information to local residents.Participants in the initiative included ClassCo Inc.(US), Commerce One (US), Compusult Ltd.(Canada), CubeWerx (Canada), ESRI (US), Galdos Systems (Canada), Ionic Enterprise (US), PCI Geomatics (Canada), SAIC (US), Syncline (US) and York University (Canada).

After the technology demonstration a panel discussion of representatives from the participating localities explored their current use of geographic information software and data for infrastructure protection and the implications of interoperability.The panelists described GIS as a key tool for infrastructure protection and confirmed that the interoperability layer that knit different organizations together was absolutely essential to data sharing.

CIPI-1 met two of its key goals.First, it brought together a variety of governments to explore the implications of geographic data sharing for emergency response, and provided a framework to make interoperability possible.Second, the participants tweaked and tested draft interface specifications for emergency alert notification that may one day become standards for how geospatial software interacts with emergency alert systems.

The Critical Infrastructure Protection Initiative is part of OGC's Interoperability Program, a global, collaborative, hands-on engineering and testing program that rapidly delivers proven candidate specifications into OGC's Specification Program, where they are formalized for public release.Autodesk, BAE SYSTEMS, Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions and Northrop Grumman Information Technology have committed significant resources to the overall CIPI program to help accelerate OGC's advancement toward interoperability objectives.Their leadership, dedicated resources and commitment will enrich OGC's processes related to CIPI.

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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