Some time ago I posted an entry about a City of Anaheim application that leverages the Microsoft Virtual Earth platform to allow its first responders and city managers to visualize City assets, resources and live incident reporting. In this entry, I included a link to a recorded webcast that was hosted by the Virtual Earth Public Sector team and EDS, the Microsoft partner that worked with the City to design and deploy this impressive common operation picture application. EVOC has made news again, this time through Government Computer News in an article entitled "Anaheim Covers the Angles." A noteworthy passage from the article that speaks volumes to the Virtual Earth web service model: The Web-based platform can be accessed from almost anywhere. One Sunday a few years ago, Brown saw on CNN that fires had broken out in the Sierra Peak area near Anaheim. From his home in Georgia, he tapped into EVOC and its WebEOC application, a piece of third-party software that functions as an incident management system. Brown could click on an incident and get details about it. He could pull up radio chatter and listen to firemen talking to one another. “Now I knew something was going on,” he said. EVOC uses Microsoft Virtual Earth for mapping. Brown could see details, such as the hills and houses on fire, what types of vehicles had been deployed and which cities had deployed them. “I could get all that information from my home,” Brown said. Meanwhi ...
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