Geo Domain

Overview#

A field officer is about to deploy a temporary command post in a rural area for a major incident response. Before committing the location, the incident commander queries the coordinates for environmental risk: the area sits in a flood plain, and FEMA flood maps rate it as a moderate risk zone. She picks an alternative site 800 metres uphill that scores minimal flood risk and acceptable wildfire risk. The Geo domain provided that assessment in seconds, drawing on USGS seismic data, FEMA flood maps, and NWS weather feeds to produce a scored risk breakdown with mitigation recommendations.

Location-based risk assessment is useful before the fact, when choosing a site or planning a route, and during an incident, when field teams need to know whether conditions around them are deteriorating. The Geo domain supports both.

Key Features#

• Environmental risk assessment for any location using coordinates, address, or zip code input
• Risk scoring on a 0 to 100 scale across multiple categories: seismic, flood, wildfire, weather, air quality, and industrial
• Severity level classification from minimal through critical
• Mitigation recommendations based on identified risks
• Multiple location input formats: coordinates, address, city/state, zip code, and plus code
• Integration with external data sources: USGS, FEMA, NIFC, NWS, and EPA

Use Cases#

• Assessing environmental risks for pre-event site planning and operational base selection
• Providing real-time risk awareness for field operations teams making location decisions under time pressure
• Supporting risk-based routing decisions where travel through high-risk areas can be avoided
• Documenting location risk profiles to add environmental context to investigation or incident records

Industry Context#

Emergency management agencies assess deployment site risks before placing command infrastructure during major events. Critical infrastructure protection teams evaluate industrial facility locations for combined natural hazard exposure. Defence logistics planners score forward operating base locations for environmental risk before committing resources. Insurance underwriters use similar scoring models to assess property exposure at point of policy inception. Government planners evaluating infrastructure projects incorporate environmental risk assessments as a standard part of site feasibility analysis.

Integration#

The Geo domain integrates with Geofencing for boundary management, Location for tracking, Map Offline for offline capabilities, Alert for risk notifications, and Travel Safe for travel risk assessment. Risk assessments are generated on demand and can be persisted against investigation or incident records in PostgreSQL.

Open Standards#

• GeoJSON (RFC 7946): Location zones, geofences, and alert geometries are stored and queried using the GeoJSON format; PostGIS ingests them via ST_GeomFromGeoJSON and returns coordinate data in the same format.
• WGS 84 (EPSG:4326): All latitude/longitude coordinates are expressed in WGS 84 decimal degrees; Haversine proximity calculations use the WGS-84 mean Earth radius (6 371.0088 km) for proximity filtering across providers.
• ISO 8601: Observation timestamps from all external providers (EPA Ireland, OpenAQ) are exchanged and stored as ISO 8601 datetime strings in UTC.
• US EPA Air Quality Index (AQI): PM2.5 concentration breakpoints and six-tier category labels (Good through Hazardous) follow the US EPA AQI standard; all air quality observations are normalised to this scale for consistent risk scoring.
• Common Air Quality Index (CAQI, EN 15714): EPA Ireland feeds report air quality on the European CAQI 0, 100 scale, which the provider converts to the US AQI scale before surfacing to callers.
• Open Location Code (Plus Code): The location resolver accepts Plus Code formatted inputs and decodes them to WGS 84 coordinates via the geocoding pipeline, alongside street addresses and what3words references.
• GraphQL: Regional air quality and flood gauge queries are exposed through a GraphQL schema, allowing callers to request precisely the fields needed for COP map layer overlays.
• OAuth 2.0 / JWT: Every geo API endpoint enforces JSON Web Token bearer authentication with explicit permission scopes (e.g. psap:location-read), following OAuth 2.0 token-based authorisation patterns.

Last Reviewed: 2026-02-05 Last Updated: 2026-04-14