In September of 2008, Hurricane Ike barreled into the Greater Cincinnati area, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Emergency response teams from counties across the tristate area of Greater Cincinnati encountered the same frustrations in their efforts to manage the crisis: their outmoded paper maps and a lack of information sharing across jurisdictional lines prevented them from visually ascertaining the scale of the emergency, identifying critical infrastructure, or locating regional resources.
In the months following the storm, the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments (OKI), the Hamilton County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) and the city of Cincinnati Fire Department (CFD) teamed up to develop a regional map-based program designed to enhance situational awareness in times of disaster, and thus prevent problems like the ones experienced during Hurricane Ike from reoccurring. The team started with a highly customizable version of Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping software created by the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), the private GIS vendor. It overlaid the map with numerous components created from data gathered on critical local infrastructure like chemical facilities, fire stations, hospitals, and schools. It then improved the layered maps with tools that use real-time data like weather, traffic, and social media feeds. The Southwestern Ohio, Southeastern Indiana and Northern Kentucky Urban Areas Security Initiative (SOSINK) and OKI pooled their federal funding with local tax dollars to finance the data collection and technology costs of the project. After two years of tireless data gathering, the Regional Asset Verification Emergency Network, or RAVEN911, was released in September of 2010. For the full article click here
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