The technology allowed security field personnel to move throughout the event and monitor potential threats using georeferenced and temporal tracking methods. The successful deployment of the technology provided a proof of concept that may lead to future statewide homeland security initiatives.

“We understood the benefits of geographic information system (GIS) technology in homeland security and wanted to provide a more technologically advanced means for tracking and managing assets in the field from our central location,” says David Wray, director of information support services for the emergency programs division, North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (NCDA&CS). “We created a concept for what we wanted, approached ESRI professionals to develop the application, then deployed it successfully at the event. The feedback was favorable, and we achieved the results we wanted.”

        “ESRI has had a long-standing relationship with NCDA&CS, and they approached us for their latest GIS initiative,” says Mike Dyer, ESRI. “The organization has a wealth of GIS knowledge and a leading enterprise GIS already in place. The use of Tracking Server is the next evolution. They were able to provide first-of-its-kind monitoring to provide security at the U.S. Open. The GIS-based tracking provides a new level of homeland security that can be applied in many different ways.”

        The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) served as the lead law enforcement agency for this year's U.S. Open. SBI, in partnership with NCDA&CS, wanted to use the U.S. Open to field-test remote-sensing devices that can detect chemical, radiological, and biological threats.

        For application development, ESRI used Tracking Server to collect and send real-time data from many data sources and formats to Web and desktop clients. DigitalGlobe provided imagery data and Autonomechs provided the remote sensors. ESRI, NCDA&CS, and Autonomechs worked together to fully integrate the GIS, GPS, and remote sensors. ArcGIS Desktop was used as the client GIS software, with ArcIMS and ArcSDE serving as the GIS server platform.

        Tracking Server was developed by Northrop Grumman to enable the integration of real-time data and GIS. This integration helps users make better decisions and share information quickly, easily, and efficiently. Tracking Server is an enterprise-level technology that is integrated with other server and services products. More information about Tracking Server is available at http://www.esri.com/trackingserver.

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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 5,000 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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