Playing with Fire
Fires are ravaging the California forests, and emergency management teams are barely keeping things under control. Thick smoke is seeping into the city streets, and the wind patterns are constantly changing. Officials are having a difficult time pinpointing trouble spots to ensure citizens keep out of harm’s way. How will they identify a safe evacuation route?

With AstroVision feeding live images of the smoke plumes, emergency management officials are able to plan efficient deployment of their disaster crews to assist in diminishing the impact of and speeding the recovery from the destruction of the fires. They are able to divert citizens from the dangerous areas of town via a safer evacuation route, clearly visible on their computer monitors.

Flying the Not-so-friendly Skies
You’re an air traffic controller at one of the nation’s busiest airports, and you begin your watch by examining the AstroVision information on your monitor. You carefully scan the live video stream of the area surrounding the airport, which displays an incoming storm. Will you have to delay the series of flights lined up for take off?

You examine the cloud formation and quickly recognize that it will be a tough travel day for thousands of travelers, especially the pilots. You wonder how you ever managed before AstroVision’s live, color, high-resolution coverage was available. Pilots, filing their flight plans at hundreds of flight service centers across the nation viewing AstroVision data, silently share your thoughts. You quickly inform the waiting pilots that their flights will be delayed briefly. You can see that the storm is small and moving quickly, and will likely be out of the path of take-off within 15 minutes.

On the Road Again
You are driving to an interview in another state. The route the company gave you takes you through unfamiliar territory, and an electrical storm seems to be following your every move. Looking for cover, or at least relief, you are growing increasingly nervous about the unbelievable bolts of lightning, cracks of thunder, and a downpour so thick you can barely see in front of you. This road seems to be surrounded by nothing but rural farmland. If you take an exit, you're not sure if you'll just head directly into the center of the storm rather than away from it. Which way do you turn?

Your car has a monitor for up-to-the-minute live weather forecasts and traffic patterns of your projected route. Formerly a straight GPS monitor, it is now a combination map and weather tracker. You look at the storm's pattern and see it moving east, so you hop on the next exit and head west. Within minutes, the rain subsides and you see a pancake house on the right. Time for a well-deserved—and safe—dinner break before you head out on the road again, this time taking an alternate route.

Vacation in Paradise
Your sister and her family are supposed to leave tomorrow for a vacation in the Caribbean, but all of the major cable and broadcast media broadcasts are showing live, real-time coverage of a hurricane in that area. It looks pretty grim. Will your sister and her family make it, or will they have to reschedule?

Over the next four days, media executives and meteorologists combine camera footage from airplanes, reporters on the ground, and AstroVision to produce complete hurricane coverage. You and millions of others are glued to their televisions and on the Internet, watching. One thing’s for sure: this vacation will be postponed. No one wants to head into the eye of a hurricane!

Dodging a Blizzard
It’s lunchtime at work, and you are wondering if the “Blizzard of the Year” stormfront you heard about will really hit this afternoon. Do you need to get your kids from school early? Should you head home and work from there the rest of the day?

You check your personalized, localized weather on your computer. Your custom forecast overlays a map of your hometown with a live real-time video stream of the clouds and weather patterns. You see a live feed of what is happening at that moment—like having a personal video camera watching the weather. And see that there is no storm activity in sight. Whew, an easy commute today. Better get back to that report.