Storm Info Mashup

Ibiseye is an interesting storms information mashup maintained by Florida’s Heraldtribune.com. Google Maps and Weather Underground data are merged here in a fairly elegant and effective fashion, just in time for ‘07 hurricane season.

New Maps Mashups: 911, Crime and More

Incident1 is an interesting example of what can be done today by tapping into open source data and applications, producing something that just a couple of years back was available only to public agencies, at exorbitant costs. Although still limited only to some regions within the US, this mashup maps (a sample of) recent incidents and emergency calls data from police, fire and EMS. Also relevant to security and command center operators are USA Today’s report on ‘America’s Most Unsafe Cities’, promptly mashed by Morgan Quitno Press, as well as the US EPA Superfund locator.

Customized Google Maps

Google Maps just received a welcome addition to its features with a ‘My Maps’ option. The new service allows you to customize maps adding lines, shapes, photos, video and HTML descriptions. What makes this interesting for security operators is the ability to share the custom maps with their team or customers. For example, immediately following an incident, operators could quickly publish a map with all the incoming information about it, from affected area boundaries to images from the field and critical links. The custom maps can also be exported to Google Earth.

Global Risks Data: WEF 2007 Report & Maps

In case you missed it, on January 10, the World Economic Forum released its Global Risks Report 2007 which ’suggests that many of the 23 core global risks explored in the report have worsened over the last 12 months, despite growing awareness of their potential impacts.’ The WEF Global Risk Network pages contain numerous useful links to risk data sources and an excellent collection of interactive risk maps provided by Maplecroft (their site provides the same maps, data sets for purchase and also the welcome option to download mapping data in KML (for your very own Google Earth) and World Wind format.

Baghdad Violence Map

The BBC has published a well executed interactive map of deadly incidents throughout the city since 2003. The data is derived from various sources, including the International Medical Corps and the Iraq Body Count. Notably, only incidents with ten or more casualties are actually displayed on the satellite image of the city.

Weather & Maps: Emerging Mashups

Weather.com recently launched a new interactive weather map which brings together near-real time cloud cover (satellite) and radar (precipitation) layers on Microsoft’s Virtual Earth maps and satellite images. This is an interesting, quick option for tracking severe weather at the local level. Of course, for those of you (like us) who don’t remember life before Google Earth (GE), gearthblog.com has put together an interesting KMZ file collecting several, live weather sources including a hurricane tracker (works for storms worldwide), global cloud coverage, and Weather Bonk (which includes webcam coverage of affected areas.)
The NOAA/National Severe Storms Laboratory and the University of Oklahoma have brought together an excellent collection of KMZ files under the lengthy heading of Warning Decision Support System — Integrated Information – these include CONUS Radar Reflectivity, Real Time NWS Warnings, Storm Reports, etc.

A word of caution: most KMZ/KML files we experimented with in the weather category, particularly dynamic layers, should not be considered ‘enterprise ready’ – meaning that they are often the result of voluntary efforts by GE enthusiasts and may be unreliable over time. The integration of live data with GIS or mapping software such as GE has great processing value (i.e. by allowing operators to quickly identify assets potentially affected by a severe weather event) but the collection phase should still take into account the reliability of sources and consider multiple sources.

Google SketchUp 6: 3D Modeling for All

The latest version of SketchUp is even more powerful and still free! 3D modeling couldn’t be easier and the product integrates beautifully with Google Earth (GE). This tool enhances the already exceptional GE mapping and visualization capabilities. Operators can actually map their organization’s facilities and, with the Photo Match feature, create photographic-quality, 3d renderings of any relevant structure.

Global Disease Alert: A Google Earth Mashup

HEALTHmap is an interesting GE mashup the “brings together disparate data sources to achieve a unified and comprehensive view of the current global state of infectious diseases and their effect on human and animal health.” We already added it to our bookmarks.