GIS in National Security

GIS Service to support Bio-surveillance at DoD MHS

—Robert Bell, Defense Health Services Systems

The electronic surveillance system for the early notification of community-based epidemics (essence) is a web-based application providing near-real-time surveillance of health encounters throughout the dod. spatial and temporal event detection algorithms provide automated alerts of possible disease outbreaks. the spatial analysis uses the patient's home zip code and where the treating clinic. an arcgis map portal presents graphs and data tables to assist the investigation. users can zoom, pan, query, overlay and drill deeper into the data. arcgis server map service uses two basic inputs - mxd and shape files. the mxd file is a definition of a map with layers organized and symbolized by the author. the shape files are flat files with actual geographic data for the map. the geospatial query processor updates gis shape file data layers with the results of the geospatial query for gis server to render the map image to the users.