Don't Tell My "Gamer" Son About This....

Playing into the "Convergence" theme that several geospatial thought leaders like Peter Batty espouse concerning future developments in the GIS world, find below an article from Contingency Today by Autodesk's Tracey Stone.  Here's the byline: "Building information modelling and 3D gaming technology have the potential to help emergency services teams work smarter and act faster."  Click on the link below to read the article:

Can 3D Gaming Help Disaster Response?

 

Comment: The concept as related in this article is once again an example of something that is technologically possible in the test environment.  The trick to making it work in reality, however, is the ability to flow data such as building floor plans ("micro GIS") from the private sector (infrastructure owner) to the public sector (response crews).  To get there, policies such high rise building ordinances need to be written so as to require building owners to submit and maintain floor plans in an electronically enabled geospatial format that is always readily available to response crews.  While an ordinance such as that would appear to be an additional tax on the infrastructure owner, the associated outays could be more than recovered by reduced insurance costs (credit for a more effective response capability).