Caribbean GIS

The scale of the humanitarian crisis caused by the earthquake in Haiti is now beginning to be understood. One source of information is the new GEOSS Viewer. Its use of up-to-date data, via RSS feeds, and its smooth interface makes it an excellent visualisation tool for both GIS Specialists and wider users such as the news media. It is a website that allows for the search of data across multiple data portals and has analytical capabilities, such as population estimations. It is currently focused on the disaster area of Haiti. There is a GeoRSS feed that will show the locations of the earthquakes there – from the USGS Earthquake data. The site is being enhanced with additional data and imagery to support humanitarian response operations.

The site is built using the ArcGIS Server API for Flex Sample Viewer, which is a free API for non-commercial use – which any organization can download and use from here:http://resources.esri.com/arcgisserver/apis/flex/. Additional widgets are available from the code gallery here:http://resources.esri.com/arcgisserver/apis/flex/index.cfm?fa=codeGallery.
Thanks to Carmelle Terborgh for the details.