Software developed by ESRI, the leader in geographic information system (GIS), and SAS, the leader in business intelligence, helped guide the search for debris from the space shuttle Columbia after it broke apart on 1 February over the western US.
The software-ArcGIS, SAS Bridge for ESRI, and SAS Enterprise Guide-helped the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) define and map the shuttle debris path that emergency management teams searched after the disaster.
The combination of SAS and ESRI software enabled the team to quickly predict key debris lines for the shuttle's materials, as well as the areas surrounding the predicted path, providing accurate and reliable results for the search crews. These results were projected onto the surface of the earth and used in the $300 million search effort led by NASA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
"We hadn't used SAS in an emergency field situation before, but it was easy, and within five minutes we were generating locational predictions of where debris fell," said Gerco Hoogeweg, project manager at ESRI.
"We used SAS because we needed more advanced analysis tools than a spreadsheet program could provide us. Combining ArcGIS software's data visualisation techniques with SAS enabled fast, efficient analysis and aided in the entire GIS project. Integration of the SAS and ESRI platforms provided us with significant advancement in the statistical analysis of spatial data."
"Expediting accurate results in the field has been critical to getting answers associated with this tragedy," said Fiona McNeill, technology strategist at SAS. "The combination of SAS and ESRI capabilities enabled the search teams to quickly determine where to focus their efforts, saving both time and money. We are grateful that we were able to help the emergency response teams in their efforts."
The need to consider spatial relationships as a factor in the intelligence generation process prompted SAS and ESRI to work together to build the SAS Bridge for ESRI - a product the companies co-developed.
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For more than 30 years, ESRI has been the leading developer of GIS software with more than 300 000 clients worldwide. ESRI software is used in all 200 of the largest cities in the US and in more than 60% of counties and municipalities nationwide. Headquartered in California, ESRI has regional offices throughout the US, international distributors in more than 90 countries, and more than 1 500 business partners. ESRI's goal is to develop comprehensive tools that enable users to efficiently manage, use, and serve geographic information to make a difference in the world around them. ESRI also provides consulting, implementation, and technical support services. ESRI can be found on the Web at www.esri.com.
SAS
SAS is the market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence (BI) software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at more than 40 000 sites - including 90% of the Fortune 500 - to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; enable better, more accurate, and informed decisions; and drive organisations forward. SAS is the only vendor that completely integrates leading data warehousing, analytics and traditional BI applications to create intelligence from massive amounts of data. For more than 25 years, SAS has been giving customers around the world "The Power to Know". Visit the company's Web site at www.sas.com.