RE: [emergency] CAP Visualization (was RE: CAP Developers' Forum...)

["Speede, Kwasi" <Kwasi.Speede@associates.dhs.gov>]

Kon,

We are implementing simple GIS capabilities here at Anteon. In particular,
we use Oracle Spatial on the backend to produce map views for the area
impacted by the broadcast incident. Oracle Spatial will convert the polygon
or circle Lat/Long data into a map. I am not sure how sophisticated your
application scenario is, ours is relatively straightforward. We use Oracle
to convert the Lat/Longs into clickable maps and State/County codes. Our
application code then generates census data reports that present
demographics about the affected geographic region and estimate the potential
impacts to people and structures. 

We've built a CAP broker in Oracle OC4J 10G. The broker parses the CAP
broadcasts to identify messages relevant to our customer (FEMA) business
processes. We store the message in Oracle XML DB with a Receiver Method
(JMS/Message Driven Bean) and populate our incident software with relevant
data from the message content. The J2EE enterprise application executes the
Oracle Mapviewer component to generate the map display from the Oracle
Spatial db. When the broker identifies an appropriate message, notification
methods are executed that deliver email, mobile phone and PDA messages to
subscribers. Subscribers can then access their various applications to view
the incident event data. 

Kwasi

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Kyser [mailto:ktrails@comcast.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 4:32 PM
To: emergency@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [emergency] CAP Visualization (was RE: CAP Developers'
Forum...)

Warning Systems also displayed polygons representing
the plumes from chemical disasters - the messages were
generated by other CAP providers.

We adapted some code we had used to display storm
cells in a previous application, and displayed the plumes
instead.

We used the Pepperwhite mapping software in a VB
environment. Well, actually, the map application was VB,
and the CAP parser / plume broadcaster was Java.

-jeff kyser

On Wednesday, May 19, 2004, at 03:28  PM, Art Botterell wrote:

> Kon -
>
> The idea of visualizing aggregate CAP traffic is an interesting one.  
> The <references> and <incidents> fields provide a mechanism for  
> associating multiple messages in a graph... provided that the  
> originator provides them, or that some reliable mechanism can be  
> devised for inferring such relationships after the fact.  As is so  
> often the case, the holdup appears to be at the input.
>
> (Of course, relationships could be built on the basis of sender, event  
> category or whatever, but it seems like in most cases the result would  
> be a simple set that might not be very interesting visually, except  
> perhaps when displayed geographically.)
>
> As for mapping, I've done a couple of demos plotting CAP location data  
> over a map... I used an open-source platform called OpenMap that reads  
> various formats including ESRI shape files, but a commercial GIS would  
> work as well if not better.  The ComCARE team (in particular, a  
> company called GeoDecisions out of Pennsylvania) has also done CAP  
> plots in a web mapping service.
>
> The CAP <polygon> tag, in particular, is derived from GML, so  
> GML-aware platforms should be able to use it pretty directly...  
> although extracting the points and constructing a new shape is pretty  
> easy.  <geocode> values require the use of polygon lookup tables...  
> easy in the case of well-known areas like ZIP codes or county (FIPS)  
> boundaries... less so in the case of system-specific zones that may  
> not be familiar to all recipients.
>
> - Art
>
>
> At 11:17 AM -0700 5/19/04, Kon Wilms wrote:
>> A few questions for other implementers:
>>
>> 1. Is anyone else working on data visualization of mass amounts of CAP
>> alerts (such as treemaps, hyperbolic graphs, spatial trees, or such)?
>>
>> 2. I would be interested to hear from the GIS folks as to what formats
>> they are using for vector data importing/plotting. If no-one is
>> implementing GIS as part of an application, are there any guidelines  
>> for
>> supporting GIS file formats in CAP reception/parsing (or do we need
>> some)?
>>
>> Cheers
>> Kon
>>
>
>
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