On 19 October 2011, Geodan was named the overall winner of the GMES Masters 2011 (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) prize with its Earthwatchers application submission, a product that was developed for the DeforestACTION project. With this application, Geodan aims to help monitor deforestation in Borneo in order to preserve and protect the habitat of the orangutan. In addition to winning the overall prize for the competition, Geodan has also won the ‘GMES Ideas Challenge’ for the best idea for new uses for earth observation images.

Preserve and protect the rainforest

Director of Geodan Southeast Asia, Eduardo Dias lives and works in Indonesia, where he develops Earthwatchers with the people of the DeforestACTION project. ‘Many people are worried about the condition of the rainforest here and would like to make a contribution to finding a solution. With our project, we make it possible for everyone to take action themselves. This way, people are part of the solution and, using the Earthwatchers application, they are able to see for themselves what is happening,’ he explains.

Eduardo continues: ‘This project also stimulates the development of new research methods. It teaches schoolchildren and students about the possibilities and limitations of geographic information systems and all of the things you can do with earth observation tools (using satellite images).’

Earthwatchers in Borneo

The Earthwatchers application is part of the action plan, DeforestACTION. This is a worldwide action plan designed to help save the rainforest in Borneo, and is a project in which young people all over the world are involved. These ‘agents’ monitor the rainforest and with the aid of a web GIS environment and current satellite images, publish reports on their findings. The Earthwatchers application provides schoolchildren with a fun way to learn about advanced technology such as social media, GIS and remote sensing. Geodan is responsible for the construction and implementation of the application on the website.

Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES)

GMES is a programme initiated by the European Union, and its objective is to create observations of the earth related to the environment, by monitoring the effects of climate change.

• Read here the press release 'Geodan’s Earthwatchers application wins GMES Masters 2011'
• Read here for more information about Earthwatchers en DeforestACTION
  

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On 5 October 2011 Geodan received the Oracle Eco-Enterprise Innovation Award for its Aanrijdtijden Incident Management (AIM), a system the company was responsible for developing to help ease congestion on motorways. Geodan has been given this award because AIM has proved instrumental in clearing up motorway snarl-ups after a traffic accidents and incidents. In this way AIM also contributes to a reduction in carbon emissions. This biennial award is presented to companies who succeed in bringing about improvements to the environment with the aid of Oracle software. This is the first time a Dutch-based company has won the award.

Real-time location services

The Aanrijdtijden Incident Management was developed for Stichting Incident Management Nederland (SIMN), an incident management agency which works with various emergency centres and the Dutch Highways Agency (Rijkswaterstaat) and which is responsible for calling in recovery services. Once an alarm has been received, recovery vehicles are expected to be at the scene of the accident or broken-down vehicle as soon as possible so that the carriageway can be cleared. This way AIM helps reduce congestion on the motorways. Not only does it bring about reductions in carbon emissions, but also helps limit losses to the economy. AIM is based on the Geodan Movida Platform for real-time location services and Oracle.

• Read here for more information about AIM
  

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TomTom Business Solutions and Eagle BV, as the provider of the Eagle system for Public Order and Safety, have launched a solution for emergency services to arrive on site faster. Thanks to the link between the Eagle application and the TomTom Business Solution, emergency services receive location-based information on the incident directly on the TomTom device. Besides, the system improves response times by providing the quickest route to the location.Emergency workers can immediately start navigating and are always advised on the quickest route. Moreover, the link to Eagle offers access to all relevant information on the incident and the incident location, such as the availability of water for fighting a fire, the presence of hazardous substances and the location of the nearest hospital.

Shorter response time

Since a few months ago, 4 fire brigades in the Middle Gelderland safety and health region make daily use of the link between Eagle and TomTom Business Solutions for navigation of their primary vehicles. “A short response time is extremely important for an efficient and effective incident response. When every second counts, it is crucially important to reduce the number of preparatory operations,” points out Rene Streutgers, coordinator of operational preparations at the Middle Gelderland safety and health region.

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Illegal logging has reduced the forest in Borneo dramatically, victimizing orangutan populations and heavily contributing to green house gases built up. Beyond scientific reports and political discussions, new solutions are urgently needed as everyday large areas of forest disappear. We need immediate and active action! DeforestACTION is a global action project involving millions of young people around the world saving the world forest. The 'agents' will monitor the forest and report to the world using a WebGIS environment and up-to-date satellite images. In this extreme geo-ICT environment where millions of highly 'demanding' users need to persistently access terabytes of geo-information. Geodan is developing high performance tools to access and report on the data.

• Read here for more information about DeforestACTION

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The agreement for the National Crisis Management System (LCMS) 2.0 has been signed. On Thursday 3 March 2011, Wim Papperse of NIFV and Jeroen Simons of Capgemini (as the representative of the consortium with Getronics, Esri Nederland and Geodan) signed the agreement, thus completing award of the tender of the LCMS 2.0 by the national Netcentrical Work project (NIFV).In the coming months, LCMS 2.0 will be set up and tested. The system will be delivered at the end of July. Next, the LCMS 2.0 will be rolled out in the safety regions, the National Crisis Center (NCC) and the National Center for Operational Coordination (LOCC). The idea is that by 1 January 2012 all safety regions and the NCC and LOCC would adopt a netcentrical approach, using LCMS 2.0. This information system can be used by all emergency service providers involved in a crisis or disaster, both in the cold (preparation) and warm (crisis) phases.

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The Roer en Overmaas water board district is faced with the challenge of optimizing the gathering and constant updating of geo data. In this sense, through a pilot the water board is studying the possible applications and advantages of the Geodan mobile application.The pilot offers possibilities to the water board district and Geodan to gain experience in the use of an application based on Open Source software. The Roer en Overmaas water board district particularly wants to zoom in on possibilities of mutating the geometry of (art)works in the field anywhere and anytime, both online and offline.

Innovating technology

This pilot tests the application of innovating technology in support of work processes. Both organizations expect several benefits from the application, such as:

• Moving away from (expensive) customized solutions; thanks to the Open Source application underlying the application, it is possible to use different modules. They can be used for multiple applications. For example, it is possible to reuse and copy input screens (forms). 
• Intuitive use by Natural User Interface.

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Mid March 2011, upon a commission by Stichting Incident Management Nederland, Geodan has delivered version 2.0 of the BergerView. This is a web-based application for rescue workers to have a better grasp of the incident they have to deal with. In BergerView they can follow their own vehicles.This information comes from the Aanrijdtijdensysteem Incident Management (AIM), a system developed by Geodan for registering the handling of highway incidents and for measuring how fast a rescuer can be onsite. Since the implementation of AIM in 2007, response times have become significantly shorter. This means that the system has made an important contribution to better traffic flows on highways in the Netherlands.

Complementary modules

Complementary modules to BergerView are being prepared, for example to automatically find the vehicle with the shortest traveling time to an incident, a module for route determination, for using different map services and for dealing with incidents on secondary roads.

BergerView 2.0 uses Silverlight and the Open Source components Mapsui (mapping software) and Brutile (map tiling software). Also see http://mapsui.codeplex.com/.

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South Africa has given absolute priority to improving Public Order and Safety (POS). A South African delegation took part in a trade mission to the Netherlands from 7 to 11 February 2011. During this week, several organizations have offered product demonstrations on POS to this delegation. Together with Esri Nederland, Geodan has presented the Eagle crisis management system to this group.After the World Cup in 2010, the global attention for South Africa has prompted adjustments in public safety, with the South African government having allocated budgets for long-term improvements. The trade mission was organized by the Public Safety Innovation Center (PSIC).

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Recording live video images with the aid of a small unmanned helicopter that are forwarded straight to the emergency service providers onsite? Using current technology, this is possible and it has been developed in the FireFly project. Geodan takes part in this project, linking the new technology to the Eagle Crisis Management System.Thus, it is now possible for emergency service providers to see where the helicopter is located in the area and which images it is capturing on the Microsoft Surface table. This constantly provides all people involved with an up-to-date and spatial image of the incident. It is also possible also to transmit separate images to other emergency service providers through Eagle Desktop.

Jan van der Heijden innovation award

In 2010, together with other project partners Geodan has participated in an exercise in the Amsterdam-Amstelland region. Furthermore, in 2010 FireFly has been nominated for the Jan van der Heijden Innovation Award of the Dutch Association of Fire Brigades and Disaster Relief (NVBR).

In the FireFly project, Geodan works with Delft Dynamics, the National Aerospace Laboratory, Nieuwland and the North and East Gelderland safety region.

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Since last week, Eagle Crisis Management has delivered a contribution to the relief efforts in response to the flood disaster in Pakistan. Eagle is a location (geography) based Crisis Management System that helps coordinating disaster response.

Contribution of Eagle

The system is used to create and store data fast and easily, in order to share the data with predefined user groups. Based on this information, relief efforts are coordinated and priorities are set to assign available resources. Eagle Crisis Management is also used to run analyses like the calculation of numbers of affected people and damage control/reduction. Eagle BV has decided to donate all necessary Eagle software to the largest province of Pakistan, Punjab. Last week, the software has been implemented and the first training programs have been executed by Eagle locally in Lahore, capital of the Punjab province.

Experiences

“We met highly motivated people in Pakistan, they really wanted to start working with Eagle”, says Evert Meijer, director of Eagle who had the role of team leader due to his previous experience in Pakistan. “And also very capable: the chairman of the IT-board is an enthusiastic man who knows a lot about technology and who has a strong vision. He saw the urgency of using maps and sharing information right away.” Project manager Sander Vlotman adds: “But also the other staff members were able to realize things in no time and were working until late in the evening. Two participants to an Eagle training came in from the affected area and had to drive six hours to attend the training, driving back again after the training with their PC’s on which we had installed Eagle during the day. On our last day, an Islamic feast day, several staff members came to our hotel to follow the last training sessions there.”

Fast action

Through the Microsoft network, Eagle came in touch with the disaster relief agency of the Punjab province in Pakistan. Shortly thereafter, four Eagle specialists took off. Two days after their arrival, most software components were installed (Microsoft SharePoint and Groove, ESRI ArcGIS Server and Desktop and the Eagle Crisis Management Suite), local geodata was loaded in Eagle and the training programs were ready to be rolled out. Now, already 20 local staff members have been trained.

From the Netherlands via the Internet

For the first time ever, Eagle Live has been placed in ‘the cloud’ (on the Internet). Eagle Live is a viewer that provides an easy-to-use situational overview through a web browser. To support the team in Pakistan, a support team in The Netherlands has simultaneously prepared an installation of Eagle Live. This made it possible to load situational information and to make this information publicly available from the moment the Eagle System was operational in Pakistan. This revolutionary way of working makes it possible to publicize information that is needed for relief efforts very fast after a disaster occurs.

Continuation

The massive size of the affected area (it has the same size as Italy) and the current state of affairs in data collection, are making it necessary to organize a follow up mission. After the Punjab authorities have executed a long list of actions following from our first visit, an Eagle team has got to travel to Pakistan again to provide more assistance and expand the system. So it also will be able to coordinate the distribution of emergency supplies (where are they and where are they going?), and a link to an early warning system for future floodings. In The Netherlands, a lot of knowledge has been developed which Eagle wants to apply in Pakistan. Also, the support within governmental agencies will be expanded by providing presentations to different ministries about the urgency of geo-information and netcentric operations. Eagle BV soon hopes to find funding for these activities. The relief and restoration efforts will still take years, but the foundation for a good supply of information has been created.

• Follow the Eagle-team in Pakistan
• Read the press release
  

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