Joint Victim / Responder Situational Awareness DSS

Tim Murphy
San Diego State University

The purpose of this website is to share my work on the Joint Victim/Responder Situational Awareness DSS. This DSS was written during the hurricane Katrina response for IDS 691, taught by Professor Murray Jennex.

Click through the tabs on the left to view information about the system, and try using it for yourself.

• Home: Where you are now.
• DSS Spec: The specifications file for the DSS
• Movie: A quicktime movie showing the adding of a node to the system.
• Images: A series of still frame images to see different parts of the system.
• Submit Information: You can fill out this form to enter data into the DSS. This page is not being used by responders, so feel free to enter any information, real or fake, that you would like.
• Google Maps: This is the Google Maps component of the visualization system, that will allow you to look at the data from any javascript enabled web browser. To see the latest data, the user does not need to refresh the page, as the data will automatically refresh when a new entry is made. To see all of the entries by name, scroll your window down and you will see a list that you can click, and the map will center on the point. The system will check every 15 seconds for new data.
• Google Earth: If you have Google Earth installed on your computer, you can view the data in google Earth. Google Earth is a free download and can be downloaded from here. Google Earth provides a more comfortable viewing experience, but at a processor and graphics card performance cost. The system will check every 15 seconds for new data.
• MS Excel / CSV: For users that want the data loaded directly into Microsoft Excel or any other CSV reading spreadsheet program, this page is automatically updated. Users will need to manually refresh this data set in their spreadsheet program.

Why is this needed?

"As hearings begin on how to improve U.S. emergency preparedness after Hurricane Katrina, Congress must give serious and immediate attention to a major, recurring and needless public-safety problem: inability of first responders to communicate with each other during a catastrophe."

Communications Disconnect - Washington Times (September 28, 2005)

In addition to the inability of responders to communicate amongst themselves, there is no way for victims to be able to identify and share resources while waiting for rescue. The US Coast Guard rescued people who were trapped in their attic, couldn't make a phone call on their cell phone, but could connect to the internet through the phone's data ability.