The Other Intelligence

"A Better Distorted View"

The blog, Strange Maps, draws attention to this wonderful data visualization of the geographic sources of "breaking news."

Google's Data Center

TechCrunch posted a map of Google's data infrastructure.

There are 36 data centers in all—19 in the U.S., 12 in Europe, 3 in Asia, and one each in Russia and South America. Future data center sites may include Taiwan, Malaysia, Lithuania, and Blythewood, South Carolina, where Google has reportedly bought 466 acres of land.

The Challenges of Interoperability

KMWorld recently explored the continuing problems with government agencies' "interoperability."  Or, their ability to share information and ideas through IT.  This is not an easy task, since each government agency -- whether it's federal, state, or local -- have their own IT technologies and requirements: 

For almost 10 years, large metropolitan areas have been working on interoperability issues, but in many cases those efforts have been limited to getting telecommunications systems to communicate with one another. Sharing data during an emergency has proven a more difficult knowledge management challenge.

Especially since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, there’s been a sense that better information sharing protocols are needed. For instance, during Katrina, officials in emergency operations centers (EOCs) needed to know where all the rail cars in the area were and what type of hazardous material was in each one, so they could send out HazMat teams to check on them. Many were under water.

During an emergency, officials also must know the status of hospital facilities near a disaster area, says Drew Sachs, VP, crisis and consequence management, for consultancy James Lee Witt & Associates, a part of GlobalOptions Group. "That data is often not readily available to an EOC," he adds.

Despite agencies’ efforts to improve sharing real-time data, portals or intranets linking multiple emergency response agencies and jurisdictions are still rare. "You won’t find many midsize cities that haven’t touched on this, but few have a complete solution in place," says Sachs.