Haiti Earthquake Response
In the aftermath of the Haiti Earthquake, SharedGeo was called upon to provide automated spatial indexing services for hundreds of pre-processed Military Grid Reference System (MGRS)* enabled map tile PDFs. Theses files were generated at the Center for Interdisciplinary Geospatial Information Technologies, Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, and were continually updated during the recovery process, sometimes as often as four times a day.
These files were named via a standard method, derived from the MGRS. This approach was used to index and geo-locate each of the PDF tiles to their respective location on the ground. SharedGeo took on the responsibility of keeping Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) compliant Web Mapping Services (WMS) and Web Feature Services (WFS) in place during the recovery efforts that linked the MGRS named PDF map files to their respective locations on the ground. The tile location polygons were updated by writing a dynamic indexing script that kept track of new files as they were added to the repository for web publication and use in the field.
Emergency responders on the ground, as well as mapping system developers, were able to overlay this service onto their mapping interfaces so that their “view of the world” was automatically updated as new files were added. Consequently, the WMS and the WFS maintained and updated by SharedGeofor were used in multiple online and desktop mapping engines that helped in the relief efforts after the earthquake. Click here to proceed to these services.
*Inside the United States, a modified version of MGRS called U.S. National Grid (USNG) is being promoted as the emergency services sector’s “common language of location”. Learn more.
