Leveraging your GIS as a Collaborative Platform

MedMap-Collaboration from HQ to the Field and Beyond

—Robert Shankman, Dept. of Health & Human Services

MedMap is a secure Geographic Information System (GIS) based, electronic, interactive mapping application. This application incorporates information from numerous sources both internal and external to HHS, other federal and public agencies into a single visual environment for enhanced situational awareness, assessment, and management of resources for planning as well as for response to a natural, man-made or pandemic event. This system will support functions such as policy analysis, planning, course of action comparison, incident management, and training. It supports the needs of decision makers at various levels of management within HHS and other federal agencies to provide enhanced situational awareness at a level of granularity needed for all responders including, regional emergency coordinators and teams in the field. It is also able to display and provide details on medical care sites, resources and mobilization points; provide analytical tools for planning and preparedness efforts. During a large event such as an improvised explosive device (IED) or hurricane, there is the need to immediately determine medical care sites, resources and mobilization points and modify needed data as it becomes available and changes. Rapidly changing conditions and the need for a large regional and national response requires extensive pre-planning and a highly flexible system as well as the ability for data from the field to seamlessly get to leadership removed from the scene and aid in the planning of the event's response. MedMap is able to display many different datasets and data feeds including local data feeds to help all involved work with a more complete aggregation of data thus allowing for more coordinated decision making and response. With a fully customizable interface individual users are able to define the data layers that they need for a specific event or need.