GeoAnalytics® Retained By The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) to Implement a Geospatial Data Integration (GDI) System

 
MADISON, WI – May 12, 2008 – GeoAnalytics® Inc., an IT consulting firm that specializes in the planning, design, and implementation of spatial intelligence systems, has been retained by the Florida Department of Agriculture Services (FDACS) to implement a Geospatial Data Integration (GDI) system.

The GDI system will initially provide spatial data and analysis support to emergency planning and response functions at the Department. This includes data integration functionality to extract, transform, and load FDACS data from their disparate operational systems into a standard and easy access data format in the GDI Data Repository. The data to be loaded includes FDACS Facilities, FDACS Employees and their emergency-related skills, and regulated dairy and poultry farms and processing plants.

The GDI System will also provide a web-based spatial analysis application. This tool allows emergency personnel to analyze and display facilities that are within the different impact zones of events such as hurricanes, wildfires, and potential animal disease outbreaks like avian flu or hoof and mouth disease. Emergency personnel can also assess which FDACS employee could help respond to an event (e.g. staff with experience handling large animals or those with CPR skills). Personnel can subset which facilities are included in their analysis, annotate the maps emphasizing key points of interest or status, and subsequently disseminate map and tabular reports to other responders. Using the application results, FDACS believes they can more effectively and efficiently plan how to allocate resources to respond to the event. The tool also supports post-event activities where emergency response planners evaluate impacts as the event changed over time.

“FDACS is responsible for homeland security readiness regarding food and agriculture for the State of Florida,” said Tom Ries, GeoAnalytics Project Lead. “The GDI system will support their underlying mission to readily apply data investments that exist throughout the Department to enterprise business functions such as this. GeoAnalytics is very excited to assist FDACS on implementing spatial intelligence in a way that will provide value for homeland security now and other business functions in the future.” The project is expected to be finished this summer.

 About GeoAnalytics, Inc.

GeoAnalytics (www.geoanalytics.com) is an IT consulting firm that specializes in the planning, design, and implementation of enterprise class, spatially enabled information systems that create true spatial intelligence. More than data and information, spatial intelligence combines system and data integration with business and predictive intelligence as well as spatial analytics to provide knowledge and understanding from all corners of the enterprise. The firm is headquartered in Madison, WI, and has team members located in Illinois, Texas, Pittsburgh, and Florida.