Pennsylvania Earns Award for Exceptional Application of GIS Technology

HARRISBURG, Pa., July 14 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Pennsylvania's Office of Public Safety Radio Services has earned a 2010 Special Achievement in Geographic Information System (SAG) Award from the Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI). The award will be presented this evening at the organization's international user conference.  

"GIS is a critical tool in the development and use of the commonwealth's public safety radio network. It enables us to view and share information in new and innovative ways, which leads to better decision making and problem solving," said Charlie Brennan, Deputy Secretary for Public Safety Radio. "This award represents our commitment to being a leader in the area of geographic information systems."

The Office of Public Safety Radio Services (OPRS) operates the Pennsylvania Statewide Radio Network, or PA-STARNet.  It provides public safety and emergency response dispatch, as well as wireless voice and data communications, to the State Police, PennDOT and more than 20 other state and local government agencies, regional task forces and business partners. It includes 237 high-profile towers and 640 microcells, which provide VoIP coverage to more than 95 percent of the state's 45,000 square mile land mass and more than 96 percent of its roads.

The commonwealth earned the SAG award for developing an outage viewer that displays the impact of tower outages on communications in a specific area. Most outages are the result of scheduled maintenance.  However, towers can also go down unexpectedly due to lightning strikes, vandalism and other causes. Using the outage viewer tool, OPRS can provide users with real-time maps of coverage status, as well as views of future system status based on information about upcoming scheduled maintenance.

For more information about the Special Achievement in GIS award, visit: http://www.esri.com/sag/.  

To learn more about Pennsylvania's Office of Public Safety Radio Services, visit: http://www.oa.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/public_safety_radio/485 .

Media contact: Dan Egan, 717-772-4237

SOURCE Pennsylvania Office of Administration

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