Education

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Mission

Develop training standards and programs for the Minnesota GIS and Emergency Services Sector (ESS) communities that will promote productive interaction, provide training to those communities, and facilitate state and national training opportunities.

Why?

  • To be able to provide effective support to emergency responders, members of the geospatial community need to understand ESS policies, standards, "lingo" and procedures
  • Since all disasters are local, there is a need to educate geospatial practitioners all the way down to the local level about the ESS and how to provide support services
  • Although FEMA's Emergency Management Institute (EMI) and several other national organizations have developed a number of independent study courses and task books specific to the use of geospatial technology during disasters, a formal certification profile has never been established for Minnesota
  • Through an established profile of education and certification, it will become possible for employers to establish training goals, and the state to establish personnel resource typing which would enhance intra-state requests for assistance
  • In conjunction with this educational effort focused primarily on the geospatial community, it is also critical that training is made available to the ESS community so that they know how to leverage the force multiplier available to them through geospatial technology

Our Story

From 2008 until 2010, then Chair of the Education Project Team, Joella Givens, developed a series of cross-community meetings focused on how to develop a profile of training which would led to certifying geospatial practitioners on their knowledge of the ESS community.  Out of this first in the nation effort focused on the Emergency Management community, a pilot program called Geospatial Emergency Management Specialist (GEMS) was created.  Information about GEMS has been available since late 2010 but the effort has never been formally adopted by state government.

Project Related Items

Project Team Current Goal

Review, update, republish and promote GEMS as a way to build emergency and disaster response capability in Minnesota.

Meetings