GIS Applications Move to Cell Phones

The Pacific Disaster Center, a project largely funded by the US Department of Defense, demonstrated its newly released DisasterAWARE platform at the conference. The platform continually monitors information feeds from meteorological and geological agencies and delivers information and alerts in real time to subscribers. Subscribers can share analyses and situation reportsand can query underlying databases.

But what makes DisasterAWARE different than previous similar applications is that it is available on Apple iPhones. Why iPhones, especially when most agencies and departments shun the iPhone option? Because the Pacific Disaster Center is headquartered in Hawaii and Hawaii State Civil Defense uses iPhones and asked for an iPhone application. The Pacific Disaster Center is also planning to release an Android version in the next couple of months, apparently with DoD approval.

RIM was on site demonstrating Freeance Mobile for BlackBerry, a new application that allows agencies to download ArcGIS 10 data to BlackBerries but and allows users to edit maps and data and send them back to the ArcGIS server. The application employs a server-side application and a Java applet on the BlackBerry.