The Design and Implementation of a Web-based Decision-support System for Public Safety Agencies

The Oklahoma Climatological Survey (OCS) has initiated a program known as OK-FIRST (Oklahoma’s First-Response Information Resource System using Telecommunications; Crawford et al. 1998) to provide Oklahoma’s public safety agencies the ability to access and apply real-time weather information via a decision-support system. OK-FIRST was begun through funds from the Telecommunications Information and Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP), an agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce. OK-FIRST currently supports 40+ public safety agencies (fire, police, and emergency management) from across the state of Oklahoma with valuable weather information. OK-FIRST was developed from several efforts at OCS. First, a need was recognized to begin the transition of disseminating data from the Oklahoma Mesonet (Brock et al. 1995) from its original dial-up bulletin board system (BBS) to the World Wide Web (WWW). When the Mesonet was commissioned in early 1994, the BBS represented an effective mechanism to deliver Mesonet data products to a host of users (K-12 schools, agricultural interests, the scientific community, a few public safety agencies, and the media). However, this system required users to download specific data files, and subsequently, to display the data files using a software application (McPherson and McPherson 1993; Morris 1994). What that system lacked was an intuitive "point-and-click" interface to obtain desired information in a one-step process. Even so, this technology supported over 350 users before the widespread availability of Internet access presented a viable, low-cost alternative to 1-800 telephone service. Finally, the lessons learned through supporting these users provided core knowledge to develop OK-FIRST. The second cornerstone of OK-FIRST began in early 1995 when two vendors from the NEXRAD Information Dissemination Service (NIDS; Klazura and Imy 1993) recognized OCS/Mesonet’s success in disseminating real-time weather information to state