Date: Jun 18, 2008 Source: Company Data (
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June 18, 2008 -- Greenbelt, Maryland-based ElanTech was awarded a contract from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in partnership with Murray State University (Murray, KY), to develop the Incident Management Decision Support System (IMDSS). This software tool brings together all information pertinent to the management of an emergency in a single, intuitive, geospatially organized digital dashboard. ElanTech (http://www.elantech-inc.com) is a prime contractor to the federal government, offering both acquisition program management and software development services.
"The goal of the IMDSS project is to provide on-site incident commanders with the real-time, dynamic data they need to coordinate the efforts of first responders," says Swati Allen, President of ElanTech. "The IMDSS is a man-portable geointelligence dashboard, presenting that data on a dynamic satellite image of the affected area. With it, managers will be able to see and correlate information with its physical location, giving them nearly comprehensive situational awareness."
Recent history has shown that in the aftermath of emergencies such as floods, tornadoes or hurricanes, communication and information sharing among organizations remains challenging. In order to act most effectively, first responders and emergency managers must have access to traditional information, such as 911 calls and maps, as well as non-traditional data such as traffic, weather, resource availability and more. Often the data is available, but from multiple sources in a non-standard format. As a result, many data streams must be managed simultaneously. This is the interoperability challenge that the IMDSS will overcome.
"If emergency managers are to make the best informed decisions most quickly, then situational information from multiple sources must be correlated and presented to them in an easy to understand form," says Michael Salonish, ElanTech's Executive Vice President. "Our Sensor Analyst's Geo-Intelligence Engine (SAGE™) product provides a service-oriented architecture (SOA) framework for the IMDSS to ingest, process, and visualize data, and then to share the knowledge. For first responders, this means that data from multiple sources -- applications, sensors, e-mail, web pages -- can be stored and made available to everyone supporting the relief effort." The IMDSS also enables data to flow up and down jurisdictional levels. "When deploying local, state and national teams, resource coordination requires this information to flow seamlessly from the local command center to higher levels," says Salonish.
In operation since 1998, ElanTech has a proven track record of serving Department of Defense (DoD) clients. This contract, awarded by the National Institute for Hometown Security, is ElanTech's first project for the DHS.
