Access to vital information is now available at faster speeds than ever for Piedmont’s city leaders, school administrators and first responders.With the new, limited-access Web site called Virtual Alabama, vital information including maps and databases are at the tip of the finger in an emergency event. Piedmont’s city leaders including City Clerk Bill Fann and other city employees, school system administrators, police department administrators and fire department leaders took part in a training session for the program at Piedmont High School on Friday.
The training session showed examples of the site’s powers and numerous uses. For example, in the event of an armed intruder in a local school, police and administrators can access the site from anywhere and view live feeds from cameras within the school.
Piedmont Police Chief Steven Tidwell said capabilities like that make the job of his officers more effective in situations like that. “It’s an incredible tool for officers to be able to access the school’s cameras before he arrives on the scene,” he said.
Piedmont City Schools superintendent Matt Akin agreed. “From a school safety standpoint, the possibilities are endless with this program,” he said.
In the event of a devastating tornado, fire department and emergency worker vehicles can plan their route by accessing birds-eye views of the roads surrounding the damage site. For Piedmont Fire Department Chief Glenn Leath, this tool is a sure help when it comes to navigating the department’s large trucks through potentially dangerous roadways. “It makes it where we can look and see what is happening and what has happened within a very small amount of time,” Leath said.
Tidwell said the police department has already been using the program for the past eight to 12 months primarily for intelligence gathering in drug cases. He said its capabilities could be very beneficial when it comes to getting city leaders and emergency workers on the same page.
“From a command and control perspective, this tool is very helpful with getting our leaders together and on the same page in the event that something bad happens.” Tidwell said.
The program was unveiled to the state in November 2007. It is joint effort between the state and the program Google Earth. Every Alabama county contributed hundreds of maps to create the myriad of information accessible through the site.
Norven Goddard, assistant director of science and technology for the Alabama Department of Homeland Security, told Piedmont’s leaders and emergency workers that the site is an “amazing combination” of information that has allowed government workers to access information about their county and any other county in the state.
“This site is truly an innovative thing for our state,” Goddard said. “This is already serving as a model for programs like this in other states.”
Alabama is currently the only state that has a site like this, he said. Several other states have sites that layer lots of information submitted by the government, but only Virtual Alabama combines information submitted by every county as well.
The site is currently only accessible by government workers who have the site’s program downloaded free of cost onto their computer. The State Department of Homeland Security keeps track of who has downloaded the program and records the number of licenses a city has downloaded.
So far, the program has 2500 users across the state, Goddard said.
The site not only aids workers in the event of an emergency, but may also aid city leaders in situations like wooing an industry to the city by having the ability to show them a satellite image of the area where they might locate and point out area schools and other businesses.
Federal disaster assistance requests can also easily and quickly be put together following a disaster by accessing aerial photographs of the area before and after the event to determine the property tax valuation of damaged structures, Goddard said.
“The possibilities are endless,” Goddard said. “It’s only constrained by your imagination.”
