First release of the Minnesota Situational Awareness Viewer (MNSAV) occurred in August 2020. MNSAV was developed to provide the Minnesota public with a "one-stop-shop" for publicly available emergency/disaster planning and response mapped information. Extensive research was conducted to ensure the public domain data sources used were the best available at that time.
Although initial incident information shown focuses on response to COVID-19, data related to other types of incidents common in Minnesota such as significant flooding and wildfires can be added as they occur in the years ahead. Similarly, future development plans anticipate directly incorporating many of the individual data resources presently listed in the "Other Situational Awareness Maps and Info" section.
In addition to arriving at the MNSAV home page through the Emergency Preparedness Committee's website, MNSAV has a dedicated domain. The MNSAV landing page can be accessed directly by entering 'mnsav.org' in the URL bar of any browser.
MNSAV works best on large displays such as those typically associated with desktops, with performance diminishing as the screen size becomes smaller. As a practical matter, tablets are the lowest level of usable platform.
Design and initial implementation of MNSAV was by Nicole Helgeson using a Leaflet mapping framework. Her services were donated by SharedGeo.