PRESS RELEASE –

On July 16, 2025, University of California San Diego’s ALERTCalifornia program was awarded a Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) award from Esri, for innovation in the field of GIS software and technology, geospatial analytics, and mapping. This award recognizes ALERTCalifornia’s map layer that allows emergency managers and the public to incorporate live camera views into their maps, enhancing situational awareness before, during, and after natural disasters. The SAG award is given to select organizations globally to acknowledge outstanding work with GIS technology and was presented during the 2025 Esri User Conference in San Diego.

The award recognizes ALERTCalifornia’s development team Jayne Bormann and Rachael Brady, who were supported by additional program team members. In April 2025, ALERTCalifornia launched a new Esri map layer that provides critical, real-time information from the program’s ever-growing network of more than 1,190 camera sensors to emergency responders and the public. The layer was released ahead of California’s traditionally recognized peak fire season, a critical time as the state faces increasingly frequent and severe wildfires that threaten public safety, environmental health, and economic stability.

The map layer shows each ALERTCalifornia camera sensor’s location, real-time viewshed, and the camera’s current image, which is then updated every 15 seconds. Organizations can use the layer to add ALERTCalifornia live feeds into their own maps, apps, and dashboards, directly within ArcGIS, Esri’s geospatial platform. Since its spring launch, the ALERTCalifornia layer has been viewed more than 470,000 times.

“UC San Diego is pleased to receive a Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) award from Esri, for innovation in the field of GIS software and technology, geospatial analytics, and mapping,” said Neal Driscoll, ALERTCalifornia director and professor of geology and geophysics at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. “Providing these actionable real-time data to Esri’s Living Atlas allows the public to assess their risk during wildfire events.”

Emergency managers like the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) and California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) utilize the ALERTCalifornia camera layer directly in their mapping applications to get real-time situational awareness. The ALERTCalifornia map layer gets sensitive data to those who need it, in real time, in a format that encourages use and reuse, without altering established workflows, enabling users to monitor and respond to natural disasters more effectively. The layer can be used with a variety of applications and maps, ensuring that the data is not only available but also actionable, furthering ALERTCalifornia’s goal to provide open-access critical data.

“The ALERTCalifornia Living Atlas layer allows users the ability to add these data directly into their platforms that they are most familiar with, expanding ALERTCalifornia’s utility and reach across the Esri platform,” said Rachael Brady, ALERTCalifornia deputy director of research.

The ESRI GIS community includes over a million active users in 350,000 organizations globally, all of whom have access to ALERTCalifornia’s map layer. See the full list of 2025 Esri SAG award recipients here.