There’s an interesting and timely post in the online magazine On Windows that details a partnership between Microsoft and ESRI to create a Fusion Center, which aims to help first responders share real-time data, collaborate, and display information visually on interactive Bing maps and SharePoint-based tools. The solution addresses the need to make sense of a great deal of digital information, to act on the most important details, to analyze the information for trends, and to record and monitor that information through time.

The title of the story is “Technology Lessons from Haiti,” pointing to the need to quickly analyze information from an evolving event so that informed decisions may be made quickly. The issue of data sharing and analysis during times of emergency response is a growing area of concentration, and an area of focus at Microsoft’s Worldwide Public Safety Symposium that took place in Redmond, Washington last week.

Microsoft and ESRI launched the Fusion Core Solution this past July, and have packaged it to be fully scalable so it can be deployed by the smallest of agencies at low cost, but also be capable of meeting the needs of large federal agencies.

The Massachusetts Commonwealth Fusion Center is an early adapter of the Fusion Core Solution and the agency depends on the offering for a number of capabilities, including:

  • Managed Intake — Preloaded and fully customizable forms for processing, assigning, and satisfying many different types of intelligence and information service requests
  • Enterprise Search — Provides tools to search across multiple data sources including file shares, Web sites, and databases
  • Robust Geodatabases — The ability to easily capture, maintain, and disseminate spatial data using the ArcGIS geodatabase
  • Integrated Analytics—Powerful search and preconfigured geospatial analysis capabilities that are extendable to integrate new or existing applications
  • Analyst Collaboration—Integrated capabilities to enable analyst and customer collaboration using Web sites, wikis, and blogs
  • Robust Security — Can be integrated with existing authentication and auditing systems or can provide these capabilities out of the box
  • Tools for Managing Operations — Powerful management reporting capabilities for managing analyst staffing and monitoring center activities

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