Pleased to report that the Visionlink team, and on behalf of FEMA a team from IBM Global Services, are completing their work building a two-way, automatic data exchange between the National Shelter System deployed by the American Red Cross, and the Shelter System deployed by FEMA.
Thanks to this regular and constant data exchange, FEMA can benefit from the 60,000 plus shelters managed by the American Red Cross as part of the Red Cross capacity to help Americans during disasters. Similarly, shelter data updates from FEMA can be shared with the Red Cross.
In times of crisis, shared and accurate data is at a premium. Redundancy counts, too. These two integrated systems provide a powerful level of fallback should anything happen to either critical system during regular or crisis level operations.
You can learn the status of any currently open shelter by going to the Red Cross Shelter Map, or you can download a free iPhone app (contributed by Visionlink to the Red Cross). The American Red Cross National Shelter System and the data exchange are deployed from Visionlink's Community Operating System (CommunityOS).
Thanks to this regular and constant data exchange, FEMA can benefit from the 60,000 plus shelters managed by the American Red Cross as part of the Red Cross capacity to help Americans during disasters. Similarly, shelter data updates from FEMA can be shared with the Red Cross.
In times of crisis, shared and accurate data is at a premium. Redundancy counts, too. These two integrated systems provide a powerful level of fallback should anything happen to either critical system during regular or crisis level operations.
You can learn the status of any currently open shelter by going to the Red Cross Shelter Map, or you can download a free iPhone app (contributed by Visionlink to the Red Cross). The American Red Cross National Shelter System and the data exchange are deployed from Visionlink's Community Operating System (CommunityOS).