April 07, 2009 -- Farallon Geographics ( www.fargeo.com) created a robust web-based incident management application for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) Emergency Operations Center (EOC). The web application incorporates all of the functionality of MTC's previous desktop application, but adds enhanced availability, speed, and ease-of-use, as well integration with mapping visualization services like Google Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth.

During a major disaster or event, the MTC is required to activate an Emergency Operations Center (EOC) to support the needs of regional transportation agencies and the emergency management community. MTC EOC staff are responsible for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating regional transportation information that may impact local and regional emergency response decisions. The MTC selected Farallon to develop a web-based incident management application with a modern, intuitive interface optimized to streamline the collection of incident data, as well as the display of incident locations relative to other critical data sets. In addition, this application will also facilitate enhanced coordination between transportation agencies, and make it easy to distribute regional information to various agencies during time sensitive emergency situations.

Farallon developed the application using Microsoft’s .NET and ESRI’s ArcGIS technology with an ArcSDE connection to Microsoft’s SQL Server. The application’s geocoding engine uses MTC’s own GIS street data to ensure rapid registration of incident data. Support for common geodata formats such as shapefiles and KML, enables easy data sharing with partner EOC’s, as well as other agencies.

Users register emergencies on a map in the form of markers, which are color coded red, yellow, or green based on the status of the incident. Incidents causing severe damage to the transportation network are coded red, while incidents that have been cleared of transportation network delays are coded green. The application also provides the ability to add new bus routes, ferry docks, freeway detours onto local roads, emergency shelters, and make-shift hospitals, as well as to denote areas affected by fire or other damage.

“The web-based incident management application allows users to easily perform routine tasks, such as flagging incidents that require response, while simultaneously eliminating a single incident being reported multiple times”, said Kearey Smith, GIS Coordinator of MTC. “We can then generate summary reports from the mapped incident data with comments regarding the nature of the incidents, as well as the responses and impacts associated with them”.

“This management tool allows the EOC to effectively manage and assess large volumes of continuously generated data in real time, and to quickly provide the same comprehensive data to our regional stakeholders”, said Radiah T. Victor, Senior Program Coordinator of MTC Regional Incident/Emergency Management Program.

About Farallon Geographics
Farallon Geographics ( www.fargeo.com), based in San Francisco, is a leader in the planning, implementation, and integration of GIS systems and software to support mission critical business functions. As systems integrators focused on geographical data, Farallon provides unique and unbiased strategic and technical implementation services for enterprise-scale GIS.