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The Virtual Earth Public Sector team is exhibiting at the ESRI FedUC today, Wednesday February 20 and tomorrow, at the Washington DC Convention Center. We can be found in booth 602 in the exhibit hall where we will be showing ESRI customers how they can extend their ESRI investments through Virtual Earth as a tool for better visualization, dissemination and collaboration around data created using ESRI ArcGIS tools. A featured demo will be for Social Distance Geoprocessing.

The demo highlights the use of the ArcGIS Server Geoprocessing Service utilizing Spatial Statistics and Microsoft Virtua Earth to identify distribution of the sick and compare that distribution to locations where people typically gather, such as schools, churches and hospitals. The premise for this demo is that in the event of an infectious disease outbreak, authorities* may want to close gathering places to prevent the further spread of infection. Public health officials would need actionable information such as a list of gathering places in the affected areas. This is a perfect scenario for Virtual Earth which allows tabular data to be visualized on a map, bringing clarity to that information and ultimately making it more actionable.

The demo makes use of several new features in ArcGIS Server, including its Geoprocessing services to run a complex model identifying gathering places and outbreak influence. Particularly germane to this blog, the demo highlights the interoperability of ArcGIS Server and Virtual Earth through the ESRI REST and javascript API's for ArcGIS Server 9.3.

The below screenshot demonstrates data of outbreaks layered on the Virtual Earth map (represented by the red crosses) as well as gathering places (hospitals in blue, for example). When we run the social distance modeling tool, the application generates a problem solving workflow model that helps determine the spatial statistics of the distribution of the sick and the greatest potential impact.

A right click of the mouse over a hospital provides more detailed information about that location--such as number of beds, type of facility, etc.--by querying the ArcGIS Server. A right click on a school allows the user to pull a report providing a list of schools that need to be closed as part of the mitigation plan.

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I love this demo because it shows how Virtual Earth is a great platform not only for visualizing location relevant static data but also a great front end for data modeling and analysis.

Time to hit the show floor. Hope to see you there!

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