Applications in GIS, Participation Assignment #1

Article Outline: The Incident Map Symbology Story
Link: http://www.napsgfoundation.org/blog/napsg-blog/131-the-incident-map-symbology-story
By: Lt. Chris Rogers
Date Published: May 4, 2012
Outlined by: Lynne Johnson
Date: June 11, 2013

As you can imagine, maps are very useful tools when it comes to emergency response.  They can provide a wealth of information about previously existing data along with the current emergency situation, whatever that may be.  Across many agencies, maps are indicative to success, however, inconsistencies can be more burden than help.  This article emphasizes the need to have consistent symbology in maps across different first responding agencies.  They refer to this consistency as the “Common Operating Picture.”  This is an important issue because if that one group, or even, one person isn’t available to understand and convey the map then emergency response could be delayed.  And a delay like that could cost lives.  The goal of this project was to come up with universal symbols that would have the same meaning across various agencies all while:

• Setting guidelines instead of standards
• Creating symbols that can be hand drawn
• Having symbology what doesn’t require a lot of training to understand
• Creating symbolofy that is usable in routine business of a public safety agency.

This problem was approached with the help from NAPSG Foundation, the DHS S&T First Responder Group and FEMA's National Integration Center.  A small group of first responder practitioners with knowledge of GIS were put together and posed with this issue.  Keeping in mind the bulleted points above, they used a probable situation of a building fire to create a map with working symbology.  Initially, they had two conference calls to get the ball rolling with ideas and end goals which eventually led to several in-person meetings to go over what they had come up with.  The correspondence between several agencies to work on this problem was a particularly smart method.  It allowed for numerous difference view points all while having the same end goal.

The result was that they came up with different categories of symbols for “pre-incident, hazard and incident command.”  Specific key factors are that:
• “The shape of symbols is defined by the category”
• “What is IN the shape is dependent on the map output and use”
• “Can be hand drawn”

These results are based on a small-scale incident; however, the symbology required will be used across a wide variety of incidents, including large scale.  They recognize that this is only a small step in the right direction for map consistency throughout various agencies for emergency response. However, with the progress they made other groups can learn from their methods and use their results off of which to build.  This article provides a great example of how GIS can aid in crime analysis, but mostly aid in law enforcement.  Trends can be tracked about incidents; several attributes coinciding with the incident can be noted and analyzed.  This article relates to this week’s lecture and lab because it speaks to keeping our communities safe.  Once we gain consistent symbology, we can move on to prevent and mitigate incidents.