[Freegis-list] Katrina maps and photos via open source tools

[Bill Thoen]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005, GISuser.com - Glenn wrote:

> You might be interested in a special article we just published today
> from the crew involved in the GIScorps response in MS.. Pretty
> interesting. See gisuser.com for the article

The GISCorps thing was all ESRI, and from your article it doesn't look
like open source tools were used much at all. When the call went out from
GISCorps for the 20 GIS/GPS experts they needed, they specifically said
you had to have ArcGIS 9 loaded on your laptop.

It seems to me that depending on one source of software for emergency
response is a poor policy. For one thing you cut out a lot of alternative
expertise (especially when you want volunteers), and for another you risk
encountering a serious bug in your one-source software, or in the case of
responding to an emergency caused by a terrorist attack, any terrorist who
does a little research is not going to miss an opportunity to also try an
attack on a single-source software package used by the responders. In
fact, I've recently learned that there is such a serious bug in ArcSDE 9
and 9.1 right now that makes it unreliable in conjunction with SQL Server
(apparently files get scrambled under certain circumstances so it's not
just idle conjecture.)

I'd like to see the emergency response planning process accommodate
alternative software solutions and focus on the job and the results
required rather than depend on a single brand name GIS. Even something as
simple as agreeing that Shape files and GeoTIFF and NMEA are the standards
for data interchange would be better than imperiously mandating that
ArcGIS 9 is the only answer. One of the most basic concepts of emergency
planning and response is "defense in depth" and depending on only one
solution flies in the face of that principle.

As a journalist, you might ask someone why only ESRI software was
welcomed, and when they say "to facilitate data interchange", turn that
rock over and see what crawls out. I bet the real reason is that they are
so sold on ESRI by ESRI's excellent marketing efforts that no one has even
considered the risk of considering no alternatives. I'm not even arguing
that ArcGIS isn't up to the job; I'm just saying that putting all your
eggs in one basket is not wise.

Anyway, that's why I'm lurking here on FreeGIS-list. I want to see if
there's anything in the FOSS GIS world that is good enough to use for E911 
response and planning efforts besides the commercial solutions.

- Bill Thoen