Putnam County 911, reponding to all emergency requests

Putnam County installed a new GIS mapping system in October of 2002. The new system provided by InfoCode out of Nashville, TN allows the callers location to be displayed on the map.

GIS(Geographical Information System) is new to the 911 arena. The need to locate cellular calls with the new Phase II of wireless 911 technology has brought GIS to the forefront. Putnam County was one of the first counties to have it’s own mapping system back in the early 1990’s. That system was based on Autocad and the streets and addresses had to be hand drawn and were not to scale. With the new GIS system, aerial photographs of the county allow for structures and streets to be as precise as possible.

The GIS software called “Respond”, is windows based and has many features not seen in other software. The software places an icon at the exact location of the call. If it is a 911 call from a landline phone, the location is based on the street address of the caller. If the call is a cellular call, the location is based on the X-Y coordinates supplied by the wireless carrier with the 911 call. The dispatcher sees a one mile square block of all the addresses and streets surrounding the call. The dispatcher can zoom in or out or pan across the map as needed to zero in on the caller’s location.

The GIS system contains over forty layers of data displaying not only streets and house numbers, but such things as fire hydrants, water and gas lines, ESN boundaries and hazardous materials locations to name just a few.

The aerial photography in the GIS system is probably one of the most used features. The photographs taken in 2001 allow you to see the actual structures and terrain with impressive clarity. This gives the feeling to the dispatcher of flying in a helicopter and being able to see everything from the air.

The maintenance of the GIS system is a joint effort of 911, Assessor of Property and City of Cookeville. A GIS council was formed by these three agencies to automate and guarantee the updating of the system. With any database, the information must be kept current to be effective. The council uses several ESRI products to maintain the data including ARCSDE and ARCIMS. A depository SDE server is used to store all GIS data in the county. Each agency downloads nightly any new changes and after new data is compiled by the SDE server, uploads of fresh data are sent back out to each agency. This allows for the most up to date data to be shared among agencies. There are 8 different agencies or departments that provide data to the GIS system. Every city and county department has access to the GIS system by the IMS server. This allows each department to have access through a web browser and not be required to purchase any GIS software.

Click on Picture to Enlarge.

Our aerial photography called “Raster Data” was by provided by the Tennessee Base Mapping program which is a state agency. As you can see the clarity is remarkable and you can actually count the hash marks on the Tennessee Tech football field.

The precise aerial photography allows dispatchers to actually see how driveways run to houses and outside layouts of the houses themselves.

Our GIS system shows not only all house numbers, but fire hydrants, water and gas lines and the actual parcel boundaries of each plot of land.

Our GIS and 911 systems are tied together. The map automatically locates the 911 call and places the icon of a “phone” for easy view by the dispatcher.

Surrounding house numbers and streets are displayed which allows emergency responders to easily locate the emergency.

Cellular 911 calls are located by longitude and latitude. The icon of a “cell phone” is automatically placed on the map where the call is coming from. There are still some wireless carriers that have not deployed this technology yet.

Our system also has the surrounding counties maps. Wireless calls do not always adhere to county boundaries. This allows dispatchers to locate callers even though they may be in a surrounding county.