District of Columbia Emergency Information Center (2004-Enterprise System) (2005)

System Summary The Emergency Information Center (EIC) at http://www.emergencycenter. dc.gov was launched in September of 2003 to meet a critical need in the District of Columbia for a highly visible, comprehensive, easy-to-use, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)-compliant, location-based source of emergency information. Prominently displayed on the DC.Gov Web site, EIC delivers information and instructions to D.C.'s 570,000 residents, 500,000 commuters, and 19 million annual visitors. The site is powered by sophisticated geographic information system (GIS) mapping technology, which is capable of detailing areas affected by emergency events and providing instructions based on one's location in the city. What makes EIC an exemplary system is the ease with which such maps can be created on the fly by non-GIS personnel, the site's ability to tailor emergency information to a specific area, and its user-friendly interface that makes searching for important public safety and medical information easy--even for visitors who do not know the city. The site's public interface is deceptively simple. In nonemergency mode, it allows users to search for police, fire, and medical units by neighborhood, address, map, or landmark name (especially helpful to the city's large numbers of visitors). A member of the public may type in an address or select from a drop-down list to view maps that show nearby evacuation routes, fire stations, hospitals, Metro lines, police stations, schools, and landmarks. In emergency mode, GIS maps can be created from more than 200 data sets to quickly convey location-based emergency services information such as open shelters; points of distribution for water, ice, food, clothing, and medication; volunteer training centers; field medical-care units; or centers for missing persons. Many government portals in the United States have emergency information pages--some with GIS components. EIC's Web-based maintenance tools set it apart from other municipalities. These tools allow EIC to be updated outside of the D.C. government's wide area network, so access to government buildings or the D.C. Emergency Operations Center isn't necessary to create or update maps on the Web site. The maintenance tool is also simple to use, so persons with minimal GIS training can successfully create sophisticated maps. EIC created a single source on the D.C. portal for official D.C. government emergency information and GIS-powered maps, and provided a number of other benefits: * It improved the District's one voice approach to emergency management by consolidating information that had been scattered across numerous departmental Web sites. * Its visibility on the DC.Gov portal brought more discipline to the public information release process. * It has provided a medium for smaller District agencies to publish information on the DC.Gov Web site. * The Web site development process exposed shortcomings in existing neighborhood plans that had been buried on numerous agency sites and were out-of-date. Motivation for System Development The District of Columbia needed a way to efficiently and effectively deliver official emergency information and instructions to D.C. residents, commuters, and visitors. The D.C. government was in the midst of an aggressive effort to move information and services to the Web when New York and Washington were attacked on September 11, 2001. The number of visitors to the DC.Gov Web site increased threefold that day, strongly indicating the public would go to the Web in large numbers for emergency-related information. Follow-up research conducted by the D.C. government confirmed this fact. When federal funds became available for homeland security initiatives, D.C. seized the opportunity to incorporate sophisticated GIS technology in the Web site and create a central location for emergency information that previously was scattered throughout the D. …