Possibly on the edges of this discussion, but let me raise this point focused at OSGeo Advocates here as well as practitioners in general.
I'm the project leader on a free Open Source project that makes available a Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) application, typically used by emergency response teams, whether fire, medicine/ambulance, or police. (See www.ticketscad.org) Location information - of incidents, response units,treatment facilities, etc. - is clearly a fundamental CAD requirement, and most/all modern applications include geo in some form. Commercial CAD applications can be quite expensive, which helps explain the 40% non-USA download rate from SourceForge among other sites, including our own at www.ticketscad.org. By name, it's Tickets. While I understand that the focus of many geo practitioners here can be other than run-of-the-mill applications like CAD, I like to point out the importance of CAD in the day-to-day operations of many important services provided by local government agencies, volunteer teams, and commercial operations. Its ubiquity in so many familiar venues can obscure the fact that the costs of CAD acquisition and deployment too often deters its use in operations where it can assist in raising the effectiveness levels for often overworked teams. Which remains our motivation. Under the heading of full disclosure: While we have a conversion to base the geo components on OpenStreetMap/Openlayers, at this writing we're not yet there, and are using one of the GYM engines. My purpose here is to raise the awareness level of the OS Geo Advocates and enthusiasts re an application area - Computer-Aided-Dispatch - which may not often be considered under the general OS Geo rubric, but deserves to be, IMO. AS _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss