Mash-up or Spatial Data Infrastructure: appropriate mapping tools for International situation rooms

Analysts in international situation rooms have the difficult task of making sense of a very dynamic stream of information from multiple sources with various degrees of reliability, such as media reports, crowd sourcing data, volunteered geographic information, social networking, email, expert reports and sensor data. Most of this information is associated to location and can thus be mapped, providing an integrating platform for heterogeneous data. A wide range of mapping tools is available, ranging from professional GIS enterprise solutions to lightweight web-based maps and the open source community is very actively developing new web mapping software. Also with regards to base map data, various solutions exist, some commercial (such as Google, Bing or Yahoo), others open content (such as OpenStreetMap). However, no solution is tailored to the complex and strict requirements of international situation rooms. Over the past 5 years, the authors analyzed geographical information requirements of situation rooms operating in the context of global security. The main requirements are that these tasks must be executed in an easy way (no training), in a time-critical environment, from any computer and using any data format. Research findings show that large amounts of dynamic information streams can be shown easily on a single map, enabling situation room analysts (even in different situation rooms) to have a common situational awareness. This is possible with a light-weight open source web-based client implementing some essential industry data format standards. An own spatial data infrastructure is optional, although required to integrate own databases in mash-ups, to handle data storage and for collaborative mapping.JRC.DG.G.2-Global security and crisis managemen