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UICDS is the "middleware foundation" that enables information sharing and decision support among commercial, government, and academic incident management technologies used to support the National Response Framework (NRF) and the National Incident Management System (NIMS), including the Incident Command System (ICS), in order to prevent, protect, respond, and recover from natural, technological, and terrorist events. |
UICDS Contacts
info@uicds.dhs.gov
DHS S&T Program Manager Michael B. Smith Email Now DHS S&T Program Support Tomi` Finkle Email Now UICDS Project Manager Chip Mahoney Email Now UICDS Outreach Director James W. Morentz, Ph.D. Email Now |
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In this issue ...
- Understanding the UICDS Map Work Product
- UICDS Pilot End-Users Offering Marketing Opportunities for Technology Providers
- UICDS Biweekly Call Reminder - This Thursday
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Understanding the UICDS Map Work Product - Using OGC® Standards
One of the guiding principles of UICDS is that UICDS does not compete with application developers. There is no UICDS end-user interface.
Thus, UICDS does not have a particular mapping application that it is written for. Rather, UICDS uses an Open Geospatial Consortium® (OGC®) standard for representing a map for an incident.
The OGC Map Context provides UICDS a generic way to represent a map that is specific to an incident. The OGC Map Context contains a list of layers provided by OGC standard Web Mapping Service (WMS) or Web Feature Service (WFS) servers. Thus, by using the Map Context document UICDS does not actually put any geospatial data into the document; rather, it contains URLs that address a WMS or WFS server that returns views of the data. The application - any mapping application - then composes the geospatial data into a map visualization that fits the needs of that application's end-user. Applications can also add WMS or WFS layers that are relevant to the incident by updating the UICDS Map Work Product, thus making a new layer available to all UICDS client mapping applications.
To represent a map for an incident, UICDS uses the OGC Map Context documents available by clicking here.
Click here for an example of a UICDS response to getting the UICDS Map Work Product for a particular incident. The ViewContext element in this example contains a LayerList where each Layer that makes up the full map is listed. What your providing application does is make selected, incident specific data available via a WMS or WFS server. Adding a new Layer element to this LayerList and publishing the modified Map Context back to the core produces an update to the Map Work Product. Consuming applications will then be notified of the update and can request the UICDS Map Work Product with the updated Map Context. These applications then retrieve the new layer from the WMS or WFS servers identified in the new Layer and add it to their current visualization. This is the preferred way of adding georeferenced data to a UICDS incident.
The result is that data owners maintain control of their data, applications can be creative in composing map views for their specific audience, and UICDS map sharing is enabled without any new end-user training or applications to buy.
Open Geospatial Consortium® and OGC® are registered trademarks of Open Genospatial Consortium, Inc. |
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UICDS Pilot End-Users Offering Marketing Opportunities for Technology Providers
The UICDS team is currently beginning to initiate UICDS pilots in more than 20 states across the country. While the goal of these pilots is to create information sharing among existing applications in one or more agencies and jurisdictions, UICDS Technology Providers should consider the pilots as marketing opportunities.
More than one pilot has already extended an invitation to selected UICDS Technology Providers to provide their software as part of the pilot in an extended, operational demonstration to the UICDS Pilot Area. By investing a little time and by providing an evaluation copy of the software, the Technology Providers will have a premier audience for their product. It can be a great way to prove your indispensibility to the end-user community.
If you are a UICDS Pilot Area organization that would like to consider opening your pilot to a Technology Provider or if you are a UICDS Technology Provider that would like to be introduced to pilot end-users, contact Jim Morentz, UICDS Outreach Director. |
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UICDS Biweekly Technical and End-User "Open Mic" Calls
Every two weeks, the UICDS Team hosts the UICDS "Open Mic" call. This is your chance to meet with the UICDS technical team to get your questions answered ... and to share your thoughts and comments with everyone as well.
Join your colleagues on Thursday at noon ET on 800-366-7242 code 735108.
To check out the exact dates for the UICDS Biweekly Calls, you can always turn to the UICDS Calendar. Remember, whether you are a government agency or a technology provider, this is the place to get your questions answered about technical development, user implementations, and the UICDS Pilot Areas. So join the call and find out how UICDS can improve information sharing in your community, region, state, or critical infrastructure. |
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