Governor's Office Releases Louisiana Earth

Online, June 26, 2010 (Newswire.com) - Baton Rouge, LA - June 17, 2010 - The Governor's Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP) recently announced release of the first public version of Louisiana Earth, an emergency planning resource to provide public access to near real time mapping information during disasters. The application relays critical information on response and recovery efforts for the Deepwater Horizon Rig incident, providing the latest oil sightings, oyster bed and fishing closures, protective coastal booms, bird-nesting areas, and demographic information on affected coastline communities. "Nag Inc.'s custom client application was crucial to launching the public version of Louisiana Earth to meet our citizens' needs. Packaged as a URL, it drastically reduced the need for user support, saving our technical staff considerable time and effort during the crisis", says Brant Mitchell, Deputy Director - Management Finance & Interoperability at GOHSEP.

Professionals at GOHSEP have worked quietly behind the scenes crafting the system for over a year, but the recent oil spill has, once again, brought into sharp focus the need to keep the public informed of the extent of the damage, the measures of response that the government has taken to deal with the situation, the need to involve the entire community to cope with this unprecedented crisis, and for interdepartmental agencies to coordinate plans with active public participation. Louisiana has experienced more than its fair share of disasters in the recent past, and it is a measure of the resilience with which this dedicated group has treated adversity as a challenge, responding to the crisis with innovation and creativity. The application will continue to serve the State to coordinate emergency activity through approaching hurricane seasons. "Engineering Systems, a division of Nag Inc., has created a powerful application", says Google's Natasha Wyatt, "It showcases Client applications that customize Google Earth® Enterprise globes from State data".

Nag Inc., a Los Angeles based geospatial firm established in 1991 and a Google® Enterprise Partner, developed the Louisiana Earth Client application for GOHSEP on the Google Earth® platform to serve as a business intelligence decision-support system to manage emergencies. "Technology", says Swapan Nag, CEO of Nag Inc., "has finally evolved to a point where our solutions can provide coordinated information real-time to expeditiously serve emergency first responder needs".

"We work closely with Google® to integrate multiple sources of geospatial data to develop our web-based solutions for the public sector", adds Monideep Nag, Vice President at Nag Inc.'s Washington DC office. Nag's customized Client application is deployed throughout Metropolitan Washington DC during major events such as the Presidential Inauguration, State of the Union, and Nuclear Security Summit; in situational intelligence installations at the DC's Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) to manage emergency operations at the Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA), Office of Unified Communications (OUC), Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), and Fire and Emergency Medical Services (FEMS); at the State of Alabama's Virtual Alabama and the State of Louisiana's Virtual Louisiana; and at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).