Data on Demand

The fall of 2001 hit the Environmental Protection Agency with a one-two
punch. Just as EPA was immersing itself in the cleanup of the September 11 terrorist
attacks, a series of anthrax poisonings was spreading along the East Coast. As first
responders sounded alarms and sought information about how to handle these new
threats, the old tools for responding to environmental emergencies showed their age.
"One thing that really became clear was that we needed to build a better data
management capability," a senior EPA official concedes.

This realization set in motion an
effort that came to fruition last fall
when the EPA opened its expanded
Emergency Operations Center (EOC).
A high-tech environmental war room in
EPA's Washington, D.C., headquarters,
the EOC is a central gathering point for
environmental data from more than a
dozen EPA databases.

In the event of a terrorist act, oil
spill, chemical plant fire or some other
emergency, a custom application called
the Emergency Response Analyzer
(ERA) gives EOC personnel the
information they need to make decisions
without overwhelming them with
an incomprehensible dump of data.
Instead, EPA officials see the most
important facts and figures organized
in easy-to-comprehend maps with layers
of essential information.

"Environmental problems, which are
inherently geographic in nature, require
analysis in map formats to portray
the complex spatial relationships between
the dangerous condition and the affected
populations and resources," says EPA
CIO Kimberly Nelson. "The ERA enables
us to quickly visualize impacts from
environmental emergency situations."

Providing Policy and Direction

In the two-plus years since the terrorist
attacks, EPA hasn't been asked to help in
emergencies as catastrophic as those in
2001, but it still receives a steady stream
of alerts—as many as 3,000 a year. About
a tenth of these reports require an
emergency response from headquarters.
The EOC helps officials in Washington
provide policy and program direction to
regional EPA offices, as well as to state and
local officials.

Previously, data came from unconnected
databases, and communications relied
on phones and fax machines. Today,
however, a central control room at
the EOC manages both audio- and
videoconferencing equipment and acts
as a communications hub linking an
executive conference room and a dozen
PCs. The control room can send
information displayed on any of the
PCs to any other workstation, the
conference room or a 10-panel video
wall in the main operations room.

The ERA often appears on those
screens. A custom version of a commercial
Web mapping tool, it displays detailed
topographical, aerial or street-grid maps of
any location in the country. EPA tailored
this application with the help of its
Systems Development Center contractor,
Science Applications International.

Through a series of mouse clicks, users
can integrate and visualize data layers,
including population densities, schools,
hospitals, waterways, flood plains, major
transportation routes, hazardous-waste
storehouses and Superfund sites. The
information comes from EPA databases
and commercial services.

"Using the maps, you can go directly to
the site of an event," explains Debra
Villari, the associate director for the
Information Access Division of EPA's
Office of Environmental Information. "You
can assess the situation by asking which
people may be affected and what sensitive
environmental conditions are in the area."

Although integrating data from
disparate sources can be a challenge,
ERA developers accomplish this task
by using the unifying capabilities of
the EPA's integrated geospatial data
environment. Within the ERA, each of
the individual EPA databases—which
physically exist at an EPA facility in
Research Triangle Park, N.C.—provide
separate information layers.

"The ERA reaches out to access all of
our databases, as well as data services
both inside and outside the agency that
are relevant to an incident response,"
says Dave Wolf, EPA's Web geoservices
team leader.

Adding Layers of Security

For now, ERA information is confined to
an EPA intranet blocked from outside
connections by firewalls. But the agency is
working to implement Secure Socket Layers
technology to extend the application to
an extranet that will link other agencies,
such as the Federal Emergency
Management Agency and the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.

When security is attained, there will be
no technical limitations on who could be
networked into ERA and the EOC, says
Joe Anderson, team leader for the ERA
project. "It might go all the way down to
individual firehouses," he says.

When combined with wireless Internet
connections—another goal waiting for a
more solid security solution—first
responders will have the same
information that is available to officials in
the EOC war room.

"They'll be able to figure out what
could go wrong and keep it from turning
into a bigger event," says Kathleen
Jones, assistant director of the Office of
Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and
Response.

Disclaimer: The information provided in this
article does not constitute an endorsement by
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of
any nonfederal entity, its products or its
services.