We'd like to take this opportunity to wish all of our customers (current and future) a very happy New Year. Looking into our crystal ball, we see many exciting new developments in 2007, including:

• New features and solution sets: We have some groundbreaking advances in the works. Stay tuned to see how they can help your organization.
• New customer service programs: Of course, we're highly available, 7 AM - 7 PM PST, M-F, and off-hours and weekends via our support hotline. And we're introducing some new tools for even better support.
• New partnerships: We believe in providing the very best core competency, with broad compatibility. We'll continue to expand our robust ecosystem.

Are you using the Air-Trak system to its full potential? We want to help you leverage every feature to help improve the productivity and profitability of your fleet. That's why we're now offering free Open Product Presentation webinars. Sign up for this month's presentations now, or contact your Air-Trak sales associate at 1-877-Air-Trak (877-247-8725) to learn more.

It may be a cliché, but it can't be overstated. In emergency response situations, every second counts. Often, the most critical factor is the availability of basic information: Where is the patient (or event) located? Where are the nearest emergency resources? How quickly can they get there?

Collecting this information can waste valuable time. As Emergency Medical Services Director for Loma Linda University Medical Center (LLUMC), Dr. Jeff Grange has often witnessed the problem firsthand. And after several frustrating incidents, he thought, "Gosh, we've got the technology. Why can't we fix this?"

Integrating data from every source for real-time situational awareness

Working together with ESRI, the world leader in GIS technology, Grange propelled the development of an Advanced Emergency GIS (AEGIS) that monitors and maps the location and status of emergency resources such as hospitals, air ambulances and rescue helicopters.

AEGIS receives continuous data feeds that show where resources have been dispatched and which freeways are congested. At the medical center, a nurse can see the information on a large digital map that shows:

• Which hospital emergency rooms can accept more ambulances
• The current location of air ambulances, rescue helicopters and other emergency vehicles
• The locations of fire departments, schools and law enforcement officers
• Traffic congestion, accidents on the freeways and weather conditions

"If you're an EMS organization and you want to add other information - where are your hazmat teams or your caches of antibiotics or anything else - you can add those as additional map layers," Grange explains.

When it came to vehicle location and tracking, "We looked all over the country for current, off-the-shelf technology that could be integrated with the ESRI system," recalls Grange. "Air-Trak stood out because they have it all, with the options of using a basic cell phone or an in-vehicle unit with a cellular antenna or even satellite communications for total coverage," says Grange.

"To put it simply, this is a powerful tool that can help save lives."

Read the entire case study.

There are many different ways to look at the world, from the underlying elements of nature to man-made streets, buildings, reservoirs, power grids and other constructs. And every organization has its own different perspective.

Unlike most other AVL systems, the Air-Trak system is designed to integrate all of these elements, expressed as data on map layers. The powerful Air-Trak® Enterprise Display allows organizations to import their own User Layers and view them along with tracking and location information.

Whether it's shapefiles containing route travel paths, drawing files containing CAD data or image files with aerial photography, the Enterprise Display can integrate them all. In addition to incorporating the most recent map data (e.g., new street alignments), users can drill down to see detailed, geo-referenced data contained in the shapefiles. For example, a utility company might have shapefile data showing power line or transformer locations. These shapefiles could include hardware specifications, or other relevant information, all of which can easily be displayed in the Air-Trak Enterprise Display.

And, because ESRI technology powers the Enterprise Display, your User Layers can be projected, on-the-fly, to display properly regardless of the projection or coordinate system used in your native data. Learn more about User Layers.

Now that you've heard from us, we'd like to hear from you! Send us a story about how you're using Air-Trak in your organization, and we may publish it in an upcoming newsletter. Why not share the story - and the glory - with mobile fleets everywhere? We look forward to hearing from you.

If you've found Real-Time Visibility™ useful, please forward to a colleague!