>>Norven: How could we take advantage of what was out there in visualization?
>>Chris: Virtual Alabama is really a visualization system that provides a common operating picture for the state of Alabama.
>>Norven: One of the real, live examples that how we use Virtual Alabama is relative to a couple of tornados that happened back in February.
>>newsman: Dramatic videotape of the tornado that hit Enterprise yesterday. As the tornado barreled through Enterprise, tossing cars and snapping power lines.
>>Trish: This is truly an unbelievable scene here at Enterprise High School. The destruction here is simply indescribable.
>>Chris: Virtual Alabama was a brand new program at that point and Coffee County stayed ahead, not been adjusted in the system. So we learned, very quickly, the power of the tools themselves and how capable the software was. Having those situational awareness tools in place ahead of time and having the instant commanders and the on-scene commanders trained in advance is invaluable to our state.
>>Jim: What used to take days, if not weeks, to prepare disaster declaration, we can look at irrefutable damage and determine the amount of damage relatively quickly.
>>Norven: The main thing that we were looking for from a state perspective is a common operating picture that could be applied across all 67 counties. Virtual Alabama is built upon the Google Earth Enterprise, which we took Google Earth and took it behind a state firewall.
>>Chris: The day the servers came online and the lights came on, we went live to the community. And that was a little scary at first, because we really didn't know what the reception would be, but it turned out in the end to be the right answer. The interesting thing about Virtual Alabama is when the program was started, we initially thought it would be a Homeland Security and emergency management type application.
>>Jim: We're using it now for economic development projects, for environmental management, for conservation and natural resources. With our imagery, you can populate the gas lines, water lines, stop lights, stop signs, fire hydrants, flood plains.
>>Chris: We're really working hard to help bring situational awareness to our schools, being able to see interiors of buildings and floor plans to provide fire evacuation routing and emergency planning for those administrators in those schools. And also, Google Earth gives us the ability to be able to see camera feeds.
>>Norven: Our Environmental Protection Agency uses it quite extensively also. So back at their office, they can actually see if anybody is violating any of the environmental protection laws.
>>Chris: Every week, we get new reports from our user communities of the different ways that they're using Virtual Alabama.
>>Jim: We wanna say, "Hey look. Here is a platform that we can provide you for free. Now, go out and do great things with it."
Chris: The relationship that we've been able to have with the developers and the engineers within Google Earth has been very helpful and really key to how we've been able to roll this project out and continue to keep it rolling.
Jim: Whatever Google comes up with, we then can take advantage of to make our application better.
Chris: At the end of the day, what's most gratifying is to look in the eyes of a first responder or a law enforcement officer and realize that this tool had made a difference in how they're keeping our community safer.
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