In most cases, it will not be possible to determine which country’s boundary is correct for a given location along a boundary line. A relatively simple rectification process would involve choosing one boundary and correcting the other boundary to match the first. In order to determine the best approach for addressing border error between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, careful consideration will be given to the ways in which the EPAD will be used for border-related events and the con- sequences of incorrect results being returned by queries. This consideration will include an assessment of the legal consequences of incorrect queries. (Of course, an understanding of the legal repercussions relating to incorrect query results is important to consider in relation to all areas of the EPAD system.)
Another consideration for the project will be deciding the best way to provide a basemap service. The first option, currently in use, is to purchase an existing basemap service such as TopoZone. The second option is to build a basemap service in-house.
The two approaches have their advantages and disadvantages in different areas.
A commercial solution provides access to commercially-provided databases that are more complete than TIGER in terms of road coverage for fast developing areas of the country. However, TopoZone, the product offering selected for the EPAD, does not provide basemapping services for Mexico or Canada. In addition, a remote service such as TopoZone is accessed across the Internet and therefore could affect system performance as Internet traffic patterns vary.
By building an in-house basemap service, a reasonably consistent basemap across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada can be created by using a combination of data sources.
Also, an in-house service will, assuming loads are well balanced, provide much faster response times than an Internet-based service. It will also give more control when it comes to system stability and scalability issues. Unless another commercial product offering can provide the same benefits, it is likely that a custom-developed basemap service will be deployed.
fact that it did not have the initial software license costs and will not have the an- nual maintenance fees weighed heavily in the decision. Of course, only mature and established open source offerings were chosen with hopes that the value of the decision will be preserved long term.
When COMCARE first suggested the open source option in early 2004, many felt this approach might be difficult to achieve. That was then. In the May, 2005, issue of Government Technology, open source offerings are becoming mainstream even in the public sector. Mississippi is using open source software for a new mobile data infrastructure called the Mississippi Automated System Project (MASP). Chicago is using it for a vehicle registration system that will issue over 1 million vehicle stickers per year (Peterson, 2005). Only time will tell if these open source decisions were good ones.
Conclusion
While the EPAD is not a production system as yet, many scenario-based demonstra- tions of the E-Safety Network and EPAD have been conducted. The results are always the same. Data messaging is an important and necessary component of emergency response efforts. If an EPAD-enabled E-Safety Network was available during the events sited in this chapter, many of the communications problems experienced in Toronto, Oklahoma City, and Graniteville, SC, may have been solved.
During the SARS outbreak, public health officials could have easily routed mes- sages to the right agency destinations, without needing to know their electronic addresses. Medical and emergency professionals throughout the region, if they were registered in EPAD, would have had the information they needed to recognize SARS and understand treatment protocols so they could have provided faster and better response (COMCARE, December, 2004).
In Oklahoma City, requests for blueprints, personnel listings, and bomb effects could have been issued as soon as dispatch was notified of the bombing. Responders would have had the information they needed when they arrived at the scene, the 9- 1-1 center could have communicated with EMS, and the hospitals would have been kept informed about injuries, casualties, and requests for resources (COMCARE, November, 2004).
The South Carolina Emergency Management Division, after running a plume model based on wind direction for the chlorine gas spill, could have easily targeted and routed messages to the appropriate emergency personnel, radio and television sta- tions, and other disparate public alerting mechanisms without making telephone calls. The public would have had the information they needed in time to take ap- propriate action (COMCARE, March, 2005).
When it comes to emergency response, location does matter. By using the data-sharing framework of the E-Safety Network and registering in the EPAD, agencies can be assured that the right information will reach the right people at the right time. The technical complexities of the EPAD were discussed in this chapter. Agencies that register in the directory probably do not realize what it takes to make this happen.
Luckily, they do not need to know.
References
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Endnotes
1 COMCARE’s definition of “emergency agency” is broader than the traditional first responder community. For the E-Safety Network and EPAD, the term includes any government, private or non-governmental organization that par- ticipates in emergency preparedness and/or response activities. This includes fire, law enforcement and emergency medical services, as well as utilities, other private infrastructure companies, schools, and tow truck drivers. The total universe described by this term can exceed 250,000.
2 OnStar uses automatic crash notification (ACN) technology, bringing together emergency service providers, wireless telephone, and satellite technologies, to help protect owners and their automobiles.
3 Qualcomm supplies a product called OmniTRACS to trucking and construction
equipment fleets. OmniTRACS includes tamper-alert systems, panic alarms,
and satellite-tracking capabilities to help minimize vehicle tampering and theft and to help facilitate quick emergency response when an accident occurs.
4 A prototype of the EPAD (www.epad.us) was developed by DICE Corpora- tion in 2003. This prototype enabled COMCARE to demonstrate the data interoperability concept. However, the design of the EPAD described in this document was funded by a grant from the Department of Justice.As COM- CARE contractors,Proxicom, Inc., of Reston, VA, and Advanced Technology Solutions, Inc., of Lancaster, PA, developed the technical design.
5 The common alerting protocol (CAP) standard is an open, non-proprietary Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OA- SIS) standard for the exchange of emergency alerts and public warnings over data networks and computer-controlled warning systems.
6 The Vehicular Emergency Data Set (VEDS) is an XML standard for the transmission of telematics data to emergency agencies. Initially designed to transmit ACN crash data to an emergency agency, VEDS also serves as a data receptacle, collecting important bits of information as the response effort unfolds. The data set can contain data transmitted directly from the vehicle like vehicle speed, airbag deployment, direction of force and rollover, as well as information from the telematics provider about the vehicle and its owner.
Questions asked by a 9-1-1 operator about the age and gender of the occupants and data from responders and witnesses at the scene can also be added.
7 The Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) represents a suite of emergency messaging standards. The first EDXL standard developed is the
“Distribution Element” or DE. While different from the other EDXL messages sets, this standard acts as a container that facilitates the routing of message sets (any properly formatted XML emergency message) to recipients. The DE car- ries and routes “payload” message sets by specifying key routing information such as event type and affected geography as well as basic information about an emergency incident. In June, 2006, the OASIS international standards con- sortium announced the approval of the Emergency Data Exchange Language Distribution Element (EDXL-DE) version 1.0 as an OASIS Standard.
8 Event types represent a variety of emergency incidents. Values for this data element are specified as part of the EDXL DE standard. Currently, there are over 100 event types specified for use.
9 PostGIS has been developed by Refractions Research as a research project in open source spatial database technology. PostGIS is released under the GNU General Public License.
10 A messaging system or message broker accepts signals from an application system that wishes to send an emergency message and routes the message to the
appropriate parties based on information received from the EPAD. It functions as a signal clearinghouse and notification service, using the incoming signal as the driver and the EPAD database as the source data from which routing is performed. It can be an independent service used by many application systems or the functionality can be embedded into individual applications systems.
11 Absolute horizontal accuracy represents the difference between the represented coordinates and their true position. It is expressed as a circular error at 90 percent probability.