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Local County Experiences in GIS and Homeland Security

Emergency management agencies across the nation play a key role in coordinating homeland security efforts, channeling U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security funding received from state to local governments, and organizing mass disaster and other training scenarios. A Federal Geographic Data Committee publication (2004) http://www.fgdc.gov/publications/homeland.html states that the characteristics of GIS make "….geographic information technologies, combined with appropriate sets of geospatial information, an invaluable tool for the handling, display, and analysis of information involved in every aspect of Homeland Security." The Black Hawk County (BHC) Iowa Emergency Management Agency GIS project demonstrates how GIS is applied to the major functions of homeland security, which are to detect and anticipate, protect and defend, and respond and recover. Over the last few years, Black Hawk County EMA, in partnership with Black Hawk County, has developed a comprehensive GIS project. Geospatial information from many sources, including high-accuracy county level data, is used for hazard mitigation planning, asset inventory, demographic visualization, chemical plume analysis, emergency vehicle dispatch and tracking, and can be applied when needed to search and rescue and damage assessment. As with any preparedness effort, the goal is that if faced with a disaster event the EMA GIS project would prove an integral tool for visualizing, managing and analyzing critical data during and after the disaster. County personnel will cover local experiences with GIS for Homeland Security and the will be some time for interaction at the end.