Pre- and post-event information is shared across the geospatial community through multiple tools and systems. The individuals involved are aware of the information requirements of the situation and the data that is available to them. Ideally, our data management systems should be sharing this information in near real-time; however, data sharing frequently occurs at the human-to-human level. As technologies supporting information sharing and data dissemination evolve, our requirements to share information through email and portable media should continue to diminish.
2.6.1 Information Sharing
Information sharing at the systems level is in the early stages of development. The ability to transport critical data element between the first-responder and front-line sensor and operational systems is beginning to approach reality. Through the implementation of information sharing standards, such as those established by the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM), the Geospatial Platform, and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), geospatial information is becoming more portable and interoperable.
For dynamic data exchanges, DHS supports NIEM, Geospatial Platform, and OGC standards to facilitate data dissemination and information movement. NIEM represents a collaborative partnership of agencies and organizations across all levels of government (federal, state, tribal, and local) and with private industry. The purpose of NIEM is to effectively and efficiently share critical information at key decision points throughout the whole of the justice, public safety, emergency and disaster management, intelligence, and homeland security enterprise. The Geospatial Platform is relatively new, but it provides opportunities for the federal government to share trusted geospatial data, services, and applications with their partners and the public. NIEM is designed
The Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) is a national secure and trusted web-based portal for information sharing and collaboration between federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, private sector, and international partners engaged in the homeland security mission. HSIN is comprised of a network of Communities of Interest (COI), which are defined by organization or mission areas. Users can share within their communities or reach out to others as needed. HSIN provides real-time collaboration tools, including a virtual meeting space, instant messaging, and document sharing. HSIN allows partners to work together instantly, regardless of their location, to communicate, collaborate, and coordinate.
The GIS COI serves as the central mechanism for sharing DHS-related geospatial information.
The GIS Portal contains dedicated pages for GIS Products, Situational Awareness, HSIP Freedom, and the GeoCONOPS as well as links to many federal geospatial programs. The DHS Geospatial Infrastructure (GII) and DHS OneView (geospatial viewer) reside here and are accessible using a HSIN user account.
DHS is currently engaged in developing a next generation HSIN (HSIN-NextGen) platform that will replace the current HSIN implementation. The vision of the HSIN-NextGen is as a national information sharing and collaboration platform that:
• Serves as a conduit to unclassified data and analysis regarding people, places, events, resources, and activities
• Is owned and maintained by DHS and other domestic and international users
• Is shared in a multi-directional, trusted, and secure environment.
Best Practices - Homeland Security Information Network
Requirements & Capabilities
TeamMembersGeoCONOPS Requirements &Capabilities PPD-8 Mission Areas Disaster Operations CatastrophicDisastersAppendices
In the President’s FY11 budget, federal data managers were directed to move to a portfolio management approach, creating a Geospatial Platform. The Geospatial Platform provides shared and trusted geospatial data, services, and applications for use by government agencies, their partners, and the public. The content of all datasets and services demarcated with the Data.gov globe have been verified by the agencies to be consistent with federal privacy, national security, and information quality policies. Additionally, the geospatial platform provides access to data from various partners across state, tribal, regional, and local governments as well as non-governmental organizations.
The Geospatial Platform is an internet-based capability intended to assist anyone needing standard geospatial products, which includes federal agencies, state, local, and tribal governments, private sector, academia, non-governmental organizations, and the general public in meeting their mission needs. The overall goal is to reduce duplication of efforts and promote the use of open standards among agencies’
geospatial programs.
The move to a standard Geospatial Platform offers many advantages to its users:
• A “one-stop shop” to deliver trusted, nationally consistent geospatial products, with a preference towards interoperable web services.
• Tools for the centralized discovery, access, and use of data and services managed and maintained in multiple agencies.
• Tools that enable cross-government data to be displayed in a visual context.
• Problem-solving applications that are built once and reused many times.
• A shared cloud computing infrastructure.
Best Practices - Geospatial Platform
• Open standards compliant interoperability [OGC Catalog Service for the Web (CSW), WMS, and Keyhole Markup Language (KML)].
• The tools and infrastructure to enable decision makers to quickly and efficiently determine what geospatial data, services, and application assets can be brought to bear to solve problems.
• The opportunity to leverage complementary efforts such as Data.gov and the federal cloud computing initiative.
• The means to operationalize the federal geospatial portfolio management processes described in the 2010 Circular A-16 Supplemental Guidance.
The Geospatial Platform Conceptual Model is illustrated below.
Some of the current features of the Geospatial Platform include the migration of the Geospatial Open Source catalog to geo.data.gov, which includes a search interface and community features. The Map Gallery is now available as a feature of geo.data.gov and Version 1 of www.geoplatform.gov has been released. In addition to catalog search, users will be able to create and share maps and featured cross-government stories are being developed. Agencies are also starting to provide content supporting their business cases.
The Geospatial Platform will significantly expand access to high quality data, enabling users to improve problem solving and streamline mission critical operations. It is expected that the increased sharing and reuse of resources facilitated by the Geospatial Platform will reduce costs, result in savings and wise investments, and improve decision making while stimulating innovation. On balance, the integrated approach of the Geospatial Platform will mean that the federal portfolio of geospatial data will be better managed, service a broader audience, and be easier
to use.
Several organizations have already embraced the Geospatial Platform and have created portals for their users. The EPA and NOAA portals utilize the Geospatial Platform to provide their customers, partners, and staff members with a centralized platform for sharing, discovering, and accessing much of their distributed geospatial data, services, and applications.
For more information on the overall Geospatial Platform program, please go to http://www.geoplatform.gov.
Geospatial Platform Conceptual Model
Requirements &Capabilities
Team MembersGeoCONOPSRequirements & CapabilitiesPPD-8 Mission Areas
Disaster Oper
ationsCatastrophic DisastersAppendices
to develop, disseminate, and support enterprise-wide information exchange standards and processes that will enable jurisdictions to automate information sharing.
The NIEM emergency management domain data elements and attributes were derived from existing messaging standards promulgated by the Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) initiative, including the Common Alert Protocol (CAP v1.1), Distribution Element (DE), and Hospital Availability Exchange (HAVE). EDXL functions as a stand-alone suite of messaging standards.
The mission communities who built the NIEM Framework (law enforcement/public safety, emergency management, infrastructure protection, screening ), from the very beginning recognized that location or proximity relationships require “geospatial data” and the exchange of information with “geospatial context”
was a fundamental requirement for understanding and informing decisions. This is particularly powerful because geospatial data provides an intuitive
mechanism for cross-mission – cross-community – information-sharing and information-understanding and allows us to Prepare Nationally and Respond Locally.
The National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) is a program supported by DHS and other federal government partners. NIEM connects communities sharing a common need to exchange information to advance their missions and is intended to be the best practice for intergovernmental information exchange. NIEM provides a common vocabulary to ensure consistency and understanding among domains that may not collaborate traditionally. NIEM promulgates location elements using OGC standards.
DHS and the Law Enforcement communities leverage NIEM to enable the exchange of suspicious activity reports. These reports support information sharing between DHS CI owners/operators, the National Infrastructure Coordination Center (NICC) and the National Suspicious Activity Report Initiative (NSI).
Suspicious activity reports utilize Logical Entity eXchange Specifications - Publication & Discovery (LEX-PD) to transport reports between disparate systems across the DHS/DOJ mission space.
The Maritime Notice of Arrival (NOA) mission, led by the Department of Defense ensures that vessels bound for US ports meet their 96 hour notification requirement to provide key information concerning vessel, cargo, and crew data. Location information is tracked as position coordinates and geolocatable through visualization tools. Information is collected and disseminated utilizing NIEM-M. The NOA increases situational awareness, enables predictive analytics, and enhances threat evaluation by producing more actionable information.
NIEM is not limited to law enforcement and justice communities. The emergency management domain data elements and attributes were derived from existing messaging standards developed by the EDXL initiative.
Using NIEM, practitioners in government and industry can share accurate, complete, timely, and appropriately secured information to enable informed decision making.
Best Practices -
National Information Exchange Model
Table 2–5: Authoritative Data - Damage Assessment Mission - Ground Truth
Sub Category Theme Type Delay POC
Event Impact Damage -
Infrastructure
Commercial Building Damage Point 5 day FEMA (State/Local EOC) Government Building Damage Point 5 day FEMA (State/Local EOC) Residential Building Damage Point 5 day FEMA (State/Local EOC)
Road Damage Polyline 24 hour FEMA (State/Local EOC)
Event Location
Damaged Areas (Report Derived) Polygon 3 day FEMA, JOC, State Earthquake Damage-Field Reported
Liquefaction Polygon 48 hour USGS
Earthquake Damage-Field Reports Polygon 48 hour USGS Earthquake Damage-Reported (Did
you feel it) Polygon 24 hour USGS
Earthquake Impact-Measured (MMI) Polygon 24 hour USGS
FEMA IMAT Reports Polygon 48 hour FEMA
High Water Depth Polygon 4 day FEMA Mitigation
Red Cross Inspections Point 3 day ARC
Red/Yellow Tag Reports Point 3 day FEMA/State
SBA Applicants Point 5 day SBA
Volcano Damage-Field Reports Point 24 hour USGS Wildfire Damage-Field Reports Polygon 24 hour USGS
Specialized Response Teams
DHS FEMA Damage Assessment Teams Point 48 hour FEMA
Requirements & Capabilities
TeamMembersGeoCONOPS Requirements &Capabilities PPD-8 Mission Areas Disaster Operations CatastrophicDisastersAppendices
NIEM promulgates OGC standards and location elements in the following manner. NIEM defines simple location concepts (address, city, 2D longitude/
latitude, grid coordinates) using NIEMified data constructs. NIEM uses OGC GML for more complex geospatial constructs, such as 3D Point, LineString, CircleByCenterpoint, and Polygon, using OGC GML.
NIEM reuses about 10% of the GML constructs in the domain model (15 of ~150 GML data objects).
The OGC is an international industry consortium of government agencies and organizations, universities, and the private sector that develops publicly
available interface standards that are geo-enabled and interoperable. OGC develops standards through a consensus process involving commercial, government, and academic partners to address problems relating to the creation, communication, and use of geospatial information. OGC activities are broadly organized around ten domains or communities of interest, including the Emergency Response and Disaster Management domain. OGC standards are built to geo-enable the exchange of information among and between systems used by organizations operating in different jurisdictions, knowledge networks, and domains of activity to reduce the time required to find, analyze, and update critical information.
The net result of information exchange models and open standards is that Homeland Security stakeholders have more information available to them before, during, and after an emergency or disaster occurs.
Through the adoption of the NIEM and OGC Standards, critical information can be collected, published, and visualized with minimal effort to the stakeholder community to better inform decision making and operations.
2.6.2 Data Dissemination
Data dissemination is accomplished through many sources as opposed to a single centralized venue.
While this is effective in promoting information
data sharing and general wide area access, it does not provide a consolidated or managed source for either. Currently the formal location for posting and accessing geospatial data is through the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) and DHS Geospatial Information Infrastructure (GII) using capabilities such as the OneView web map viewer or the OGC web services for HSIP data. In addition, the USGS maintains the Hazard Data Distribution System (HDDS). The HDDS (http://hdds.usgs.gov/hdds/) provides storage and dissemination of USGS-hosted imagery and datasets related to emergency response activities. Imagery data hosted in HDDS can be categorized as public or restricted as required.
The community continues to utilize file transfer protocol (FTP) and email as fallbacks to meet their basic data sharing requirements. Vector data products are fairly compact in individual file size, facilitating data sharing through web services, email, and web postings. With agile delivery options, emergency managers have access to these data products in a timely manner to assist in their decision making.
Larger data files such as imagery or national datasets are more difficult to manage. Frequently these data types are shared through the physical transfer of external hard drives and other portable media.