On a recent episode of the hit TV show 24, the lead character and shows hero, Jack Bauer, used geographical information systems (GIS) to thwart a trap designed to kill FBI agents. He took a graphic image of a building and overlaid it with real-time data points of the locations of all the agents in the area and discovered that the agent who was supposed to be in the building as the lookout was actually well outside the building. The access to real-time information is a key component of GIS, particularly in the area of emergency management and the need to accurately deploy both human and material resources.