The making of IbisEye.com

Posted on June 6, 2007 by Melissa Worden

Christopher “Chip” Scanlan blogs about HeraldTribune.com’s IbisEye today.

In a Q&A with Maurice Tamman, idea-generator and co-creator with Charlie Szymanski, Tamman says the following about updates to the project this year:

“The entire site was built up from scratch. We consider last year to be beta and this year v1. Our primary goal was to make the application as fast as possible. Last year’s version was cool but damn slow. Many of the same features return but they are all improved and much easier to find.

“I think we’ve succeeded.

“In addition, we found a much better database of windfields and we’ve significantly improved how we display those windfields. We also added calculations for the southeastern population and cities exposed to hurricane force winds along with our analysis of Florida property exposed to hurricane force winds.

“The alert system is also much improved.

“The damage reporting system works for any area hit by hurricanes: search for an address, click on the icon and report damage. All the reports are tied to a latitude and longitude or a parcel ID number (in Florida).

“We’ve also added an alert system that can either be tied to a parcel or a point on the map (or a weather alert zone); anytime a selected alert is issued an e-mail is sent out. In addition, the system (and we haven’t tested this yet) should send out alerts if the point is exposed to hurricane force winds, is forecast to be exposed or is inside the “cone of death.”

“We also expect to add alerts for people who want reports of damage or lost people and pets near a particular point.

“There is more, but that’ll do.”