Jim has been an innovator in technology applications to crisis management since 1975.  He was the principal investigator for the landmark National Governors’ Association (NGA) studies that produced the national strategy known as Comprehensive Emergency Management that was eventually implemented in all 50 states. He was a consultant to the President’s Reorganization Project that created the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 1979.  

 

The experience Dr. Morentz gained by studying emergency operations in more than 250 different disasters around the world for the U.S. Department of State and NGA led to his first technology entrepreneurship in 1981.  He developed and took to market the first commercial software for incident management (EIS™, the Emergency Information System™) which successively integrated Geographic Information Systems, sensors, satellite communication, packet radio communication, and intelligence analysis tools into the software making it a comprehensive command, control, and communication system.  More than 9,000 licenses for the software in six different languages were operating in governments, the military, and industry in more than 30 countries in the early 1990s.