Emergency Response Management and Information System(ERMIS) – AGIS based software to resolve the emergency recovery challenges in Madurai city, Tamil Nadu

Optimum utilization of the time after an accident which is golden hour serves as a measure of effectiveness of any emergency response service provider system. Recovery actions should be taken in time to reduce the loss of life and property. In spite of the reason that the service providers are well equipped, routing problems and traffic congestions breaks their speedy recovery action in real time. This paper presents a case study on Madurai which is the third largest city in Tamil Nadu with 51.9 Km ²and is also referred to as ‘City Never Sleeps’ because of its busy life round the clock. In the recent years, it is transforming its status from ‘Athens of the East’ to ‘Growing IT hub’ of southern Tamil Nadu, thanks to the development of IT sector in this zone. Most of the emergency situations arise in the city due to road and fire accident in this paper for which a detailed GIS database of transportation network, accident locations, hospitals, ambulance locations, police and fire stations was prepared and Spatial Analysis was also carried out for accident records of years 2004 – 2008 by using Arc GIS 9.3 to map the accident risk zones. ERMIS, a stand alone software free from GIS software backend was designed with all basic map interaction functions in VB.NET platform with Map Objects 2.4, which can able to answer all kind of needs basically required for an emergency responder. A unique route finding OCX was programmed and used to plot OD cost matrix from multiple origins to multiple destinations. Route Finder was designed to find shortest, time saving routes and services areas. For effective response ERMIS found to provide a greater support in giving information about the vicinity of an emergency and solving direction finding problems.