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Geospatial Mapping Tool Saves Lives
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina swept the Atlantic, taking thousands of lives and becoming the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. In the aftermath, the Property Loss Research Bureau, an association made up of the nation's property insurers, relied on a CACI-hosted web service to gauge the billions of dollars in property damage. They were able to use the service to produce the first map of New Orleans showing flood depth throughout the area.
This solution is a derivative of CACI's Freedom Web, a geospatial web mapping tool that gives officials in emergency management, homeland security, and all levels of government the ability to view, update, and collaborate on infrastructure-related data – such as the locations of schools, bridges, and chemical plants – culled from multiple sources and vetted by CACI staff.
"Freedom Web gives our clients situational awareness, which is an essential part of emergency response operations," explains John Oswald, Senior Expert Strategy Consultant in CACI's Geospatial Solutions group. "For example, during a catastrophic flooding event, it helps rescuers to determine whether to go in by boat, helicopter, or road vehicle. Armed with this kind of smart information, emergency responders can save more lives."
A Unique Solution
Freedom Web gives first responders a low-cost, easy way to access critical infrastructure data. Without it, the cost to develop and maintain a nationwide critical infrastructure database would be beyond the budget of state and local governments. Freedom Web also addresses the challenges faced by past federal efforts, which have relied upon restrictively licensed commercial data.
Built on a CACI-hosted Software as a Service (SaaS) website, Freedom Web is accessible via a standard internet browser. It doesn't require plug-ins, which is a big benefit for government users who may not be allowed to install them. Additionally, Freedom Web is unique compared to other emergency management tools because it enables – and even encourages – users to update critical infrastructure data.
"We call this 'community sourcing,'" says Scott Simmons, Executive Director in CACI's Geospatial Solutions group. "The theory is that local officials know best what is going on in their communities and can therefore make the most accurate and timely updates. All of these data edits are routed to CACI staff for vetting, so we ensure that the quality remains high."
Freedom Web also includes a real-time "whiteboard" feature that enables users to collaborate on exercises via sketches and annotations. Users create markups on the map in the browser interface and share them with others who can then add their own edits.
Applications in Emergency Response
As of late 2011, Freedom Web had 2,800 registered users from all levels of local and state government. In 2010, San Francisco County, California used the whiteboarding capability to manage its response to the San Bruno gas explosions by tracking the smoke plumes, evacuation zones, and response activities over Freedom Web's data for critical infrastructure, street, and aerial photography.
Other real-world applications include a county government subscriber in Kansas using Freedom Web to deploy firefighting equipment and provide real-time navigation assistance to response units; and a local government subscriber in Tennessee using whiteboarding to coordinate a search-and-rescue operation.
An Enhanced Freedom Web
In light of Freedom Web's success in local and state government, CACI is tailoring it to other organizations and missions. The community sourcing and whiteboarding tools, for example, have potential applications in the security and defense industries.
In conjunction with commercial imagery satellite operator DigitalGlobe, CACI has also developed a version of Freedom Web aimed at providing embassy protection and evacuation planning for the international diplomatic community. Called the Diplomatic Facility Support Package (or DipFac, for short), this service takes Freedom Web one step further by providing more frequently updated imagery through DigitalGlobe's direct commercial feed.
In 2010, CACI demonstrated DipFac to key government officials at the GEOINT Symposium in New Orleans and the Defense Geospatial Intelligence (DGI) conference in London. The solution received such a positive response that CACI is now using it to develop the next generation of Freedom Web.
"We're taking these two tools and putting them together as one package to enhance the user experience," Oswald says. "DipFac will add more interactive features, including a 3D modeling piece, to Freedom Web, as well as a quicker refresh of geospatial imagery. The result will be a solution that is unique within the defense contracting industry – a seamless service that can supply the latest and greatest geospatial data in just a couple of clicks."
