Contracts from October 2005
Aramsco, Inc., an international supplier of homeland security products, announced that it has been awarded a competitive contract from New York State for a first-in-the-nation Hazardous Incident Response Equipment program.
The nation’s total Homeland Security appropriation for 2005 is more than $2.5 billion. New York State’s share is more than $298 million.
This contract eases the process for certain other states to quickly follow New York State’s lead. Because New York is a member of the National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO), other members may join the contract. States mentioned by name in the New York contract as possible adopters include Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, and Washington. Other states also may join the contract over time.
The contract covers a broad spectrum of domestic preparedness equipment across 13 categories, from providing personal protective clothing and equipment to explosive device mitigation and remediation equipment to search and rescue and decontamination equipment. Aramsco is one of the first 10 vendors selected as a “vendor of choice” by New York State. Other vendors’ bids are being evaluated and will be added over time as well.
Colorado Springs, CO, Fire Department (CSFD) has deployed ESRI ArcGIS 9 software.
With 450 personnel, CSFD serves 400,000 Colorado Springs citizens residing in 192 sq. mi. of territory. The fire department provides the full range of professional firefighting services including high-angle rescue, swift-water rescue, heavy rescue/urban search and rescue (USAR), hazmat, wildland fire suppression, fire prevention, code enforcement, engineering, and community education.
Prior to GIS, mapping, data management, and other GIS-related business processes were performed using manual mapping and filestoring methods. GIS brings together these previously separate, paper-based techniques and provides an automated environment where information can be maintained, updated, and quickly accessed.
The software is used for automated vehicle location (AVL), wildland fire risk analysis, hazardous material storage and permitting, understanding community risk, pre-event evacuation planning, hazardous plume modeling, and consequence assessment. The AVL application has been integrated with the Colorado Springs intelligent transportation system. Resources are routed from their locations to incidents by a system that manages the traffic signals, providing green lights and clearing traffic as well as delivering all relevant information about the site to which they are en route.
