ORLANDO, Fla. — Geocove Inc., the Orlando firm that specializes in development of sophisticated GIS systems for disaster response teams and government agencies, played an instrumental role in a major award that lauds Osceola County, Kissimmee and St. Cloud for their ability to collaborate in area disaster preparedness efforts.
Those efforts—based on software applications designed by Geocove engineers—earned Osceola County, Kissimmee and St. Cloud a Florida Local Government Information Systems Association (FLGISA) 2012 Technology Achievement Award recently for the Best IT Collaboration Among Organizations.
Karyn Tareen, president and chief executive officer, said Geocove implemented ARM360 for Osceola County, Kissimmee and St. Cloud. ARM360® is a Geographic Information System (GIS)-based application that allows field assessors from each municipality to report real-time findings to a centralized Emergency Operating Center (EOC).
“This enables local and remote decision makers to allocate resources quickly and efficiently,” Tareen explained.
“Like most U.S. municipalities, Osceola County, Kissimmee and St. Cloud invested in GIS systems,” Tareen said. “Geocove helped them leverage their GIS investment so that digital maps that are rich in locally maintained data are instantly available to disaster assessors in the field on their mobile computers,” she said.
“With a couple of clicks, they can report the percentage of damage they observe for buildings and properties,” she said.
“Call centers use the same maps and data to log caller-reported damage and to provide callers with disaster information such as shelter locations, points of distribution, outages, road blocks, and so on,” she said.
Earlier this year Geocove partnered with Florida’s Lee County to develop a sophisticated GIS-based disaster management system that won the 2012 Florida Governor’s Hurricane Conference Public Information Award.
Geocove is a member of the University of Central Florida Business Incubation Program in the Central Florida Research Park in East Orange County.
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For more information contact:
Karyn Tareen, President/CEO, Geocove, Inc., 407-210-3925 ext. 1, ktareen@geocove.com
Carol Ann Dykes, Site Manager, UCF Business Incubator-Central Fla. Research Park, 407-207-7426, carolann.dykes@ucf.edu
Larry Vershel or Beth Payan, Larry Vershel Communications Inc 407-644 4142 lvershelco@aol.com
About Geocove
Geocove, Inc. provides scalable assessment solutions built using the power of GIS across a multitude of industries. The Geocove team has extensive experience in providing assessment, reporting and mapping tools for emergency management, building officials, public health and other government agencies as well as utilities and other private industries. Geocove, Inc., a privately held corporation located in central Florida, is an authorized partner of Esri, the world’s leading GIS software provider. Please visit www.geocove.com or www.facebook.com/geocove.
About the UCF Business Incubation Program
Since its founding in 1999, the UCF Business Incubation Program has helped more than 200 emerging companies (including more than 134 current clients) create over $363 million in annual total economic output and more than 3,120 new jobs (taking direct and indirect and induced impact into account) with an average salary of $59,000. With ten facilities across the Greater Orlando community, the Business Incubation Program is a collaboration in economic development among the University of Central Florida, Orange County, the City of Orlando, Seminole County, the City of Apopka, the City of Winter Springs, the City of Sanford, Lake County, the City of Leesburg, Osceola County, the City of Kissimmee, City of St. Cloud, Volusia County and the Florida High Tech Corridor Council. For more information about the Program and its clients and graduates, please visit www.incubator.ucf.edu and UCFBIP on Facebook, on www.facebook.com/ucf4bip.