WeatherBug, the leading provider of live, local weather information, announced the City of San Antonio has recently implemented WeatherBug Professional’s GIS Data Services at its Emergency Operations Center (EOC). WeatherBug’s GIS Data Services offer numerous weather components to help keep the residents of San Antonio safe and better prepared.
Using WeatherBug’s GIS services, delivered as an ESRI Web service, personnel at the City of San Antonio EOC will be able to monitor and track live weather conditions as they impact local communities of approximately 1.5 million residents across the entire city and surrounding metropolitan area in Bexar County. WeatherBug’s GIS Data Services will also enable them to pinpoint severe weather events at their exact location and ensure local emergency response teams outside of the EOC all have the same information.
"Using WeatherBug’s GIS Data Services, we can get a better idea of what’s happening in the surrounding areas, giving us time to plan and coordinate emergency response," said Chris Stokes, GIS Manager, San Antonio Office of Emergency Management. "WeatherBug helps us determine the precise areas of the city that would be impacted the most by severe weather and the population and facilities directly affected. This tool has also provided our staff with a great common operating picture during the recent Tropical Storm Erin and Hurricane Dean by providing detailed projected storm tracks, which ultimately determine actions taken by our local city officials."
WeatherBug Professional’s GIS Data Services enable enterprise and government customers, like the City of San Antonio, to integrate live weather information from WeatherBug’s National Network of Tracking Stations into existing GIS-based decision support systems. Integrating live weather data into GIS-based platforms helps centralize asset management, improves command center operations and enables critical decisions to be made quickly, efficiently and confidently.
According to the City of San Antonio, over the past five years, severe weather events, such as hurricanes, flooding and tornadoes, have become common occurrences both locally and all over the state of Texas, leaving communities vulnerable.
Specific components of WeatherBug’s GIS Data Services include:
• Current Surface Weather Plots
• Current Surface Weather Contours
• Forecast Surface Weather
• Radar and Satellite
• Tropical Weather
• Severe Weather Alerts
"WeatherBug’s GIS Data Services, with live local information exclusively from WeatherBug, offers a value-added service to our enterprise and government customers," said Jan Dutton, director of WeatherBug Professional. "Weather is a vital element in emergency management. Using our GIS platform, the City of San Antonio and its local communities will be able to coordinate emergency management efforts and stay safe during severe weather."
GIS asset management systems are used by thousands of organizations and agencies worldwide to manage information that has geographical locations associated with it. Integrating real time, local weather data from WeatherBug is a key component for managing and solving a variety of issues such as planning transportation routes and labor schedules and dispatching utility crews when severe weather hits.
Source: WeatherBug