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Subject: Re: [emergency-gis] Symbology standards and the OASIS EM TC


I have gone ahead and posted this to the greater EM TC, because it
really is more than just symbology that we are talking about here - it
also includes incident types.

On Wed, 2003-08-06 at 04:58, Eliot Christian wrote: 
> Allen has asked for a summary of areas of collaboration and vision.
> Personally, I would sharpen that request to ask for a statement
> of requirements addressing whatever additional standards work is
> felt to be needed with regard to symbology for emergency management.

I am sorry - sounds like some confusion on what I meant - let me try to
clarify. Please bear with me, because I will start at the top to try and
make sure I am not missing anything.

[Note: I am ONLY talking about incident types and symbology here. There
are certainly other topic areas, but those are on other threads]

The need here is for applications to share emergency and incident data
(10,000 foot level), which, where appropriate, would contain the type of
incident (5,000 foot level). Ensuring consistency of maintaining the
original intent of the incident type between systems (3,000 foot level),
could be improved by not only including a description of the type (1,000
foot level - see previous posts to try and stimulate interest in
defining types), but also a visual representation of that incident (aka
symbology - also 1,000 foot level). There is the need, or "requirement."

[Posts Relating to Incident Type Definition]
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/emergency-msg/200306/msg00024.html
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/emergency/200307/msg00007.html

A real world situation following this is easy. Imagine Blue292 sending
data about a 5.6 earthquake from Arizona to a DMI-Services COG in
California where an E Team implementation as a member. For Blue292 to be
able to send the data to DMIS and then be shown in E Team is easy using
their current TIE interface. Having all 3 systems use the same
terminology (aka the word "earthquake") for the quake as well as scale
(5.6) AND represent, if any of the systems desire to do so, the incident
on a map using the same symbol. Well, there is your use case. And
designing this so that these incident types with corresponding symbols
can be utilized in other standards, such as CAP, goes a long way to
solving a very basic, but currently unsolved problem.

The emails recently sent by Bill
(http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/emergency-gis/200308/msg00003.html), Carl (which I do not think hit the list, but I will forward), and Rex (http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/emergency-gis/200308/msg00006.html) coupled with examples like this start to paint a picture of the overall interest, desire, and need to research this. Are there other standards out there we can couple together to do this? If so, what are they and how do we do that? If not, then what is the best way to approach?

> We cannot really begin to muster resources until we have an agreed
> statement of what standards work is envisioned. Perhaps Bill or Carl
> may be willing to do a first draft of such a requirements statement?

I certainly agree the GIS SC should try and pull all of these thoughts,
ideas, standards, and concepts together (that is what I meant by vision)
and let the GIS SC, as a group, determine what, if anything, should be
done. If there is a gap in the standards, then we should identify that
and move forward to try and fill that gap (whatever that means). If
there are other standards that fill the gap, then the IF SC should be
notified that it is important, from a GIS SC perspective, to include
these standards as part of the overall infrastructure framework. 

The combination of these steps (1. vision - GIS SC, 2. summary/report of
research - GIS SC, 3. recommendation - GIS SC, 4. action - depends on
recommendation) is what will allow us to solve the situation at hand
(see earlier paragraph defining need).

Hope this helps - Allen 


-- 
R. Allen Wyke
Chair, Emergency Management TC
emtc@nc.rr.com
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/emergency



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