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Subject: RE: Announcement WRT FGDC EM Map Symbols Review
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All
-
As requested
during our GIS SC concall today.
Carl
[Below is the
announcement for the review of the emergency management map symbols that were
discussed at the last Coordination Group meeting. My apologies if you
receive this more than once. -Scott McAfee]
Your organization and
membership are invited to review a standard set of map symbols. The
symbols are intended for use by the emergency management and first responder
communities at the National, State, Local, and Incident Levels.
These
symbols were developed through the cooperation of a number of Federal government
agencies and the National States Geographic Information Council under the
auspices of the Federal Geographic Data Committee's Homeland Security Working
Group. An eventual goal of this project is to have the symbols become an
official standard through an accredited standards' organization.
The
draft set of symbols are available for review by the community of intended
users: emergency managers, first responders, and others involved in disaster,
hazard, or incident mapping.
The review period will conclude on January
31, 2004. After the review period, the comments will be compiled in a
report and appropriate changes will be made to the symbols. We expect the
report to be available in the early summer of 2004. There will likely be
another period of public review as part of a formal standardization
process.
Please provide comments using the web-based form
at:
http://www.fgdc.gov/HSWG (case sensitive).
The review takes about
an hour to complete.
- Background -
The Federal Emergency
Management Agency, now part of the Department of Homeland Security, began an
initiative in 2001 to develop standard map symbols for use in emergency
management mapping. The standard is intended primarily to help first responders
and emergency managers at the incident and local levels. The resulting symbol
set, when completed and endorsed as a standard, will support disaster response
and homeland security efforts by reducing the confusion that can arise from
unintuitive, ambiguous, and/or inconsistent use of map symbols.
Since
mid-2002 the initiative has been developed collaboratively within the Federal
Geographic Data Committee's Homeland Security Working Group. A Symbology
Subgroup has been very active in defining the symbol set and developing related
products. The U.S. Census Bureau has coordinated digital symbol production.
Other active members of the group include representatives from the Defense
Information Systems Agency, the Department of Energy, the National
Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (formerly the National Imagery and Mapping
Agency), the National States Geographic Information Council, the National
Weather Service, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The symbology
subgroup activities include:
-
Defining and refining a list of map features relevant to emergency and homeland
security incident managers;
-
Developing a symbol set for these
features;
- Soliciting feedback from
the user community (emergency managers and
others);
- Evaluating the best
collaborative path for accreditation as a
standard;
- Developing
interoperability specifications and a prototype for graphical display through
the Open GIS Consortium;
- Designing
the standard so as to ensure scalability and cross-disciplinary/cross-cultural
flexibility.
Additional information about the activities of the Homeland
Security Working Group is available at http://www.fgdc.gov/fgdc/homeland/index.html.
For more information, please
contact:
Scott McAfee (202) 646-3317; scott.mcafee@dhs.gov
or
Jeff Booth (703) 317-3056; JBooth@mbakercorp.com
Scott McAfee
Department of Homeland Security
EP&R/FEMA - Risk
Identification Office
500 C Street SW
Washington, DC 20472
(202)
646-3317
fax: (202) 646-2577
scott.mcafee@dhs.gov
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