Geospatial tools can assist situational awareness in initial attack. Many of the elements presented here are best combined with a unit level COP, but can be used as standalone applications as well. The primary consideration for IA is speed, because there is not much time to sit around at a computer gathering information prior to rolling out to a dispatch. The following applications should take less than 5 minutes, yet still be useful. If you have a laptop with cellular connection, these can also be run while en route. Finding a section, township, and range in Google Earth: This is a simple task that can be accomplished using a free-to-try tool that is available on the web: First go to this page: http://www.earthpoint.us/Townships.aspx Then scroll down to the middle of the page to the section called Convert Township, Range, and Section to Latitude and Longitude Select the appropriate state, meridian, township range and section from the drop-down menus. Click Fly to on Google Earth You can now view the terrain in the section of interest to gather information. Create a point weather forecast from a point in Google Earth Open this kmz file: http://sites.google.com/site/netlinkhost/Home/useful-kmz/PointWeatherForecast.kmz?attredirects=0 A green cross-hair will appear in Google Earth. Center the cross-hair on the point you would like to get a forecast for. A placemark titled 'Geographical Forecast' will appear. Clicking on the thumbtack icon will open the point weather forecast graph in Google Earth. There is a link to the Forecast Page above the graph that will open the forecast in a separate web browser, which you can print out. |
Initial Attack |