Introduction

Clear situation awareness is a key factor for the effectiveness of disaster and emergency operations. It is based on the compilation of information collected from the different teams of responders. The building of such a picture relies on exchanging information.

To facilitate exchanges, the definition of a “standard instrument“, the TSO, carrying the description of the situation between systems is necessary. It describes the event, the resources engaged, and the tasks in progress.

The TSO files contain a set of information (in code form) that can be exchanged between systems. These can be transmitted and displayed in the recipient’s preferred format, language or platform.

TSO Editor

Developed by the OASIS Partner EDISOFT, the TSO Editor is an open-source web based application that allows creating, displaying and editing Tactic Situation Objects (TSOs). It is fully visual, allowing the user to build/change/display a tactical situation in a visual manner.
Its main window displays a map with the typical Geographical Information System (GIS) powered with advanced features to manage TSO files. The tactical situation can then be exported to a TSO file. In the same way that a TSO file can be used to load the tactical situation onto the TSO editor.

License

The TSO Editor is an open source tool which is being released with the GPL license version 2.

In general terms, this license means that the source code of the TSO Editor is available and that it is possible to use that source code to create new products as long as that new product is also released with the same GPL license (this means that derivate products cannot be redistributed as proprietary software. They have to be redistributed with a GPL license). More details are available in: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl2.txt