Lack of National Grid Support and Katrina
GovExec.com has an article that basically places much of the blame for locating challenges during Katrina on the failure of agencies to adopt the National Grid. The article describes the grid this way:
The National Grid is a mapping system based on coordinates provided by satellite imagery.
Sort of, I guess. The home page of the grid, above, does not have a definition (why?) but Wikipedia does:
The United States National Grid, officially known as the United States National Grid for Spatial Addressing (USNG), is a system of geographic grid references commonly used in United States, different from using latitude or longitude. It is similar in design to the national grid reference systems used throughout other nations. The USNG was developed by the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and is administered by the Federal Geographic Data Committee.
The big push is that its designed to work with GPS data directly (no converting).
A FEMA press sectretary is quoted in the aticle as noting that FEMA does use the Grid but did not since the responders in the southeast do not use it, but instead use adresses and latitude/longitude. There is some use of the Grid, but other FEMA reps explain its use on a wide scale is still down the road.
- via reader Duane
