An interesting read recently appeared in GeekWire. The article takes a close look at how the City of Seattle WA coped with 4 days of severe snow and is a fine lesson to other local government agencies on what they can do in response, particularly with location data, mapping, and other technology.

Of particular interest in the article was the list of web mapping resources, emergency services, and data sharing repositories that the City has in place. Some of the resources that proved valuable in during the snow included:

City snow plow map - shows locations of recently plowed streets - The map also showed real time plow locations, live traffic cams and more

Electrical utility system map - showing areas without power

In the article though, the author addressed areas that could be done better and there's some fine considerations here, again things that any city agency could consider:

• GPS enable all government owned vehicles
• Better video conferencing tools for government officials (and translators on hand if needed)
• GPS enable all buses and water taxis
• High speed fibre broadband network
• Better crowd-sourcing of citizen reporting (social media perhaps)
• System for locals to sign up and receive alerts and notices 

Seattle Snow / Weather Map service

Some Washington State Resources of Interest

• GeekWire Article
  
• Seattle Times Editorial on City's response
• King County Alerts system