The District of Columbia, for example, on March 1 will go live with a new system that uses Web services to help emergency command centers in Washington and surrounding areas coordinate responses in the event of natural disasters and terrorist attacks.

The CapStat system is being built on a service-oriented architecture that uses Web services to allow command centers in five jurisdictions in Washington, Virginia and Maryland to exchange essential information.

The centers will share data such as citizen reports of power outages, updated inventories of emergency response vehicles and the locations of people reporting suspicious disease symptoms.

Currently, emergency management officials in the Washington area communicate via telephone to share such information during a crisis, said Dan Thomas, who oversees the CapStat program. Thomas is also director of the DCStat program in the district's Office of the Chief Technology Officer.

The separate DCStat program uses Web services to monitor the delivery of municipal services.