Customized Safety
The Indiana Department of Homeland Security (IDHS) is aware of the value aerial photography brings to emergency
response efforts. The Department wanted to provide county emergency managers and first responders customized and
direct access to Indiana's statewide photography. The challenge was delivering it to agencies in a useful format,
considering most did not have mapping software or the computer hardware necessary to support it.
The solution was the Indiana First Response Map (INFRM), a custom viewing application tailored for each of
Indiana's 92 counties. The application was built to run on top of existing free map-viewing software, allowing
unlimited access with no-cost licensing. Homeland Security also supplied each county Emergency Management
Agency with ten laptop computers ready to load and run the First Response Map application.
INFRM was designed to be completely flexible. Counties can customize it to their own police, fire, or
emergency management needs. Additional local data can be added using traditional mapping software. For
expert mapping professionals, data was packaged as shapefiles, and can be used with any compatible mapping
software. The flexibility also extends to more advanced programming. The source code for INFRM is freeware,
and a copy of the source code can be obtained and further customized for specific uses.
Results
Thanks to this Homeland Security initiative, 920 Indiana first responders now have state-of-the-art mapping tools in
hand to support their emergency management activities. The highly-accurate and detailed aerial photography
provides a common map across each county and throughout the state of Indiana. The ability to integrate this data
with other local data layers provides the best available digital map data to the first responders and
emergency management community throughout Indiana.
Printable Version