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Effective Emergency Management and Planning in the Health Industry in Kingdom of Bahrain Using GIS for e-Governance

Abstract
Map World Forum 2009
Khalid A Hameed Al Hammadi
CHIEF GIS
CENTRAL INFORMATICS ORGANIZATION
KINGDOM OF BAHRAIN
alhammadikh@cio.gov.bh

As part of the e-Governance program of the Government, The Central Informatics Organization (CIO), Kingdom of Bahrain has taken the initiative of providing the Governmental organizations in Bahrain with GIS based applications to help them in decision making and also to use their existing data in an effective and efficient way that would help not only them but also to the local people. The GIS Directorate has taken the responsibility of developing, hosting, updating and maintaining the GIS applications. This paper explains the salient features of a Web GIS Application developed for the Ministry of Health in the Kingdom of Bahrain. The entire application has been developed by the GIS Directorate in Central Informatics Organization (CIO). The primary aim of this application is to provide the Ministry of Health a proper way to use their data effectively by making it spatial and also provide them with GIS maps without purchasing any expensive GIS software. The application is also accessible online to the public with up-to-date spatial data. The public is restricted from viewing sensitive data by protecting the site with user authorization. So the goal of distributing the data effectively and securely and also the idea of e-governance are quite efficiently achieved. The GIS application is capable of showing customized search options and functionalities with respect to the type of user. This would help the Ministry when there is a requirement of emergency management. It provides options to enable and disable the GIS layers such as Health Services, Doctors, Patients, Blood-Donors, etc. quickly by enabling the required layer to be displayed. The application also has an option to display the Satellite imagery of the entire country in the map. It provides the user a measure tool that can measure the distance of a user drawn line and can also calculate the area and perimeter of a user drawn polygon.