ESRI Flex Tools Interface with Canada's Multi-Agency Situational Awareness System, Allowing Public Safety Agencies to Exchange Real-Time Information

TORONTO – 2011 World Conference on Disaster Management   – June 20, 2011 – ESRI Canada today announced increased support for Canada's emergency management community with the release of the ESRI Flex Tools for MASAS.  Leveraging ESRI's geographic information system (GIS) technology and the Adobe Flex framework, the tools interface with Canada's Multi-Agency Situational Awareness System (MASAS).  The tools and associated code are provided free to emergency management and public safety agencies, and allow them to share real-time information critical to delivering a timely and effective emergency response.
 
“MASAS is an innovative national program that revolutionizes emergency management in Canada,” said Alex Miller, president, ESRI Canada.  “It enables various public safety organizations to connect their systems to a central hub so that all stakeholders can have a common, comprehensive view of emergency events.  This saves valuable time in gathering information from other agencies and allows for more coordinated planning and response.  With the ESRI Flex Tools for MASAS, agencies can easily view existing incidents and publish new content to the system from their existing Web map viewer.” 

“For the Centre for Security Science, the investment in developing a MASAS interface module for ESRI Flex Tools is an excellent example of how we have worked with industry to enhance the efforts of public safety stakeholders,” says Jack Pagotto, Head of Emergency Management & Interoperability, Science & Technology at the Centre for Security Science. “I am thrilled that our work with ESRI has been so effective. This technology will help interoperability for the large number of ESRI user agencies that provide support to emergency response across Canada.”

MASAS is a joint initiative funded by Natural Resources Canada's GeoConnections Program and the Centre for Security Science. It is a platform for sharing reliable location-based information within Canada's emergency management community and across the border with the United States.  MASAS connects numerous disparate systems using open standards and an open architecture.  It maps emergency information, such as earthquakes, weather alerts, road closures and shelter locations, from multiple organizations and creates a Common Operational Picture (COP) that provides real-time situational awareness.  The MASAS Hubs serve as centralized and authoritative messaging centres for alerts, incidents, disasters and other related emergency information.

Developed with ESRI's ArcGIS Viewer for Flex (Flex Viewer), the free tools enable registered MASAS clients to access the hubs from their Flex Viewer and consume content in the form of an Atom feed, which may also include an associated Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) message. They can also publish new content to the hubs as either an Atom entry or CAP alert message through an ESRI Flex publishing tool.  The tool creates point-of-interest or alert information using an intuitive pull-down menu. 

These MASAS tools have been designed to work with ArcGIS Viewer for Flex version 2.X, a free GIS Web application from ESRI.  It can be easily deployed and configured to add new tools and data content without any programming.  Users can extend the functionality with custom widgets downloaded from the ArcGIS Resource Center or developed using the ArcGIS API for Flex. 

The ESRI Flex Tools for MASAS can be downloaded from the Intellectual Resources Canada Web site: http://tbs-sct.ircan.gc.ca/projects/masas-esritools.  For more information, please contact your nearest ESRI Canada regional office.

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About ESRI Canada
Founded in 1984, ESRI Canada provides enterprise geographic information system (GIS) solutions that empower businesses, governments and educational institutions to make timely, informed and mission-critical decisions by leveraging the power of geography.  The company distributes the world's leading GIS software from ESRI, Telvent, Cityworks and other technology partners.  Headquartered in Toronto, the company serves over 10,000 customers from 16 regional offices across Canada and has been named as one of the top 250 Canadian IT companies and top 25 IT professional services providers in Canada by the Branham Group.  Information about ESRI Canada can be found at esricanada.com.

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