Member Highlight: StormCenter Communications, Inc.
Making real-time decisions based on the right information has never been more critical than in today’s fast-past, globalized world. It has also never been more possible, with vast amounts of data and powerful analysis tools at hand. Geospatial data and tools, in particular, enable decision-makers to visualize and analyze complex systems on local and global scales. In order to maximize the decision-making potential of these resources, GeoCollaborateTM, a new geospatial tool, bridges previous gaps and takes geospatial technology to the next level. A user-friendly GIS dashboard, GeoCollaborateTM enables true real-time data sharing and collaboration, even when decision-makers—and their data—are distributed across multiple command center locations. And even when they are using different geospatial viewer technologies.
The Challenge of “Big Data”
In today’s Information Age, data is the key to making informed decisions and analyzing the state of everything from climate change to global markets to national security. But with “Big Data” becoming boundlessly available in vast quantities, our biggest challenge is quickly narrowing in on the right subset of information. And in usable formats that help us solve the challenges at hand. Today, there are a variety of tools for visualizing and analyzing data, including geospatial tools, which provide powerful windows into complex natural and human systems. However, the full power of these tools is often limited by the distributed nature of both the data sets and the scientists, researchers and decision-makers who collaborate to make sense of them. Complex interfaces and the constraints of bandwidth to facilitate virtual collaborations are further limitations to maximizing the real-time decision-making potential of these promising tools. .
Geospatial collaboration technologies in use today are primarily limited to archiving, sharing, and displaying geo-information using geospatial viewers and Common Operating Pictures (COPs). Although these are often described as collaborative in nature, they have no actual real-time collaboration capability. Users must access geospatial datasets from individual computers, retrieving and displaying the datasets individually in order to have access to them and to combine them with their own datasets. If decision-makers are distributed across locations, as is often the case, users typically rely on desktop broadcast technologies such as GoToMeeting®, Adobe Connect® or WebEx®, which can dramatically limit the collaboration experience. Not only is transmission of the broadcasted screen displaying the geospatial viewer subject to bandwidth lag times, but once the meeting has ended all of the data and analysis is no longer shared, additionally hampering follow-up.
Users of geospatial tools, which are increasingly utilized across many industries, have long praised their potential but lamented their shortcomings. In order to maximize its potential, data must be shared in an environment that fosters discussion, ideas, answers, and decision-making among vital subject matter experts. Likewise Geospatial Intelligence needs to mature beyond its current focus of developing data warehouses and identifying which kinds of geospatial viewers and tools are being used, toward a future of true collaborative analysis and effective decision-making.
Read more at http://esipfed.org/node/7293
