Microsoft, ESRI launch fusion center solution

Public safety and homeland security professionals have a new tool to fight today’s evolving physical and virtual security threats. Microsoft and ESRI launched Fusion Core Solution, a solution architecture to strengthen the ability of government agencies to prepare, assess, and respond to threats of national security as well as natural disasters.

“This technical architecture helps organizations at all levels collaborate, so the right people have the right information at the right place and time,” Joe Rozek, Executive Director of Homeland Security and Counterterrorism for Microsoft’s U.S. Public Sector business, said in a statement.

Fusion Core Solution combines ESRI’s ArcGIS Server Advanced Enterprise and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. The Massachusetts Commonwealth Fusion Center is an early adapter of the Fusion Core Solution and the agency depends on the offering for a number of capabilities, including:

• Managed Intake — Preloaded and fully customizable forms for processing, assigning, and satisfying many different types of intelligence and information service requests
• Enterprise Search — Provides tools to search across multiple data sources including file shares, Web sites, and databases
• Robust Geodatabases — The ability to easily capture, maintain, and disseminate spatial data using the ArcGIS geodatabase
• Integrated Analytics—Powerful search and preconfigured geospatial analysis capabilities that are extendable to integrate new or existing applications
• Analyst Collaboration—Integrated capabilities to enable analyst and customer collaboration using Web sites, wikis, and blogs
• Robust Security — Can be integrated with existing authentication and auditing systems or can provide these capabilities out of the box
• Tools for Managing Operations — Powerful management reporting capabilities for managing analyst staffing and monitoring center activities

“Fusion Core Solution fully integrates GIS into public safety and homeland security workflows,” Paul Christin, homeland security specialist at ESRI, said in the joint press release. “This opens up the benefits of GIS throughout the organization. People can better collaborate and share knowledge for improved threat identification and vulnerability assessments.”

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