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SpatialNews.com Press Release
Keynote Speaker to Connect GIS with Unified Emergency Response Preparedness
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Redlands, California ¯ ESRI announces that James Lee Witt will deliver the keynote address on the role of geographic information system (GIS) technology in emergency response preparedness at the ESRI Homeland Security GIS Summit and ESRI Health GIS Conference. These concurrent events will be held October 23–26, 2006, in Denver, Colorado. Witt is the chief executive officer of the public safety and crisis management consulting firm James Lee Witt Associates (JLWA), a part of GlobalOptions Group, Inc.
Witt’s keynote presentation will address such topics as ad hoc analysis, assembling appropriate information and data, and communicating information in a new way. Attendees will see firsthand how a virtual command center can work and how GIS plays a critical role in producing real-time operating pictures and information for responding to events.
Witt served as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from 1993 to 2001. While at FEMA, Witt was the visionary and architect of national government programs related to emergency preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery, and he built expertise in integrating community-based disaster management with national emergency management strategy. JLWA is currently advising Louisiana governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco on the long-term recovery effort in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
“James Lee Witt’s extensive background in emergency management will provide attendees with valuable insight for developing crisis management strategies,” says Russ Johnson, ESRI’s manager for public safety and homeland security solutions.
In addition to Witt’s keynote address, two panel discussions in the Plenary Session will focus on the many different organizations that must participate to achieve effective planning and delivery of emergency response, whether it is to a natural disaster, disease outbreak, or act of terrorism, and how GIS can play a major role in accelerating the process and producing optimal outcomes. The presentations will highlight some of the many new features in ArcGIS 9.2 as they apply to common elements of homeland security. The morning panel discussion on incident management will be moderated by Ronny J. Coleman, former state fire marshal for the State of California, former chief deputy director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, and currently business development manager of Emergency Services Consulting, Inc. The afternoon panel discussion will focus on the role of GIS in bringing together and sharing data and will be moderated by Richard Andrews, former director of the California Office of Emergency Services and advisor to the Department of Homeland Security, Redlands, California.
The two-and-one-half-day ESRI Homeland Security GIS Summit will also feature workshops on GIS portals and interoperability topics for homeland security solutions. It will be held concurrently with the ESRI Health GIS Conference, a colloquium for those in health, hospital systems, and scientific research interested in a range of GIS applications from community health to global systems for disease surveillance and spatial awareness. Sessions at both conferences are available to all attendees, and there will be a unified exhibit area to bring people together from peer organizations.
Both conferences will be held October 23–26; the registration deadline is October 6. For additional information and to register, visit www.esri.com/hssummit or www.esri.com/healthgis.
About ESRI
Since 1969, ESRI has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, ESRI software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. ESRI applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world’s mapping and spatial analysis. ESRI is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at www.esri.com.
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