NAPSG Foundation enlisted the expertise from Mike Price, a renowned public safety GIS expert, to provide some insight on the potential uses & considerations for commercial street data to support local public safety needs. The first case scenario was conducted for Fire District 21 in Whatcom County, WA. In this example, Mike conducted a time-based travel comparison of customized Agency streets with commercially-available NAVTEQ streets. The results revealed that the commercial NAVTEQ streets provided very realistic time-based travel parameters. Read on to learn more about this case example. You will quickly see the potential power that commercial street data offers for local public safety agencies - especially as local agencies become increasingly resource & staff strained.
Case in Review - Time-based travel comparison of customized Agency streets with commercial NAVTEQ streets
Blog Contributor - Mike Price
Fire District 21, Whatcom County, WA maintains a time-based street centerline dataset to model response capability in District 21 and neighboring jurisdictions. Recently, District staff compared 4 and 8 minute travel on the District’s custom streets to identical travel on commercial NAVTEQ streets, obtained for testing through ESRI. This map shows the relationship of four and eight minute response from FD 21’s Stations 61, 63, and 71, modeled using ESRI’s Network Analyst Service Area solver. Filled, trimmed polygons show modeled travel on NAVTEQ streets, using impedance and turn parameters built into ESRI’s StreetMap Premium. Outlines represent travel on highly tuned FD 21 streets, using speed and turn impedance. Check out the PDF of the map below to see for yourself - be sure to use the"layer feature" to take a closer look (the layer feature is located on the left-hand side, click on the layers icon).
The similarities between the custom and commercial models are striking. Four and eight minute travel footprints are nearly identical for all stations! The only areas where travel perimeters are noticeably different are within a western gated community, where custom streets are intentionally conservative and in a southern industrial area, outside of the District, where custom streets were not tuned. We have determined that the commercial NAVTEQ streets provide very realistic time-based travel parameters. District 21 staff spends many project hours preparing and maintaining custom streets that model almost exactly like the NAVTEQ dataset.
Mike Price, GISP - President, Entrada/San Juan, Inc. - Mike is a renowned expert in Public Safety GIS. He specializes in GIS-based response time modeling and evacuation analysis for local public safety & emergency management agencies. He has also developed and led National and State Technical Workshops for NFPA's Fire wise Communities, and is a regular contributor to ArcUser. Mike is a member of NAPSG's Pacific Northwest Regional Leadership Team and serves as an Instructor for NAPSG Foundation, the Center for Public Safety Excellence (CPSE), and the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF). He can be contacted at mike_price@frontiernet.net
| File | Description | File size | Last modified |
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 FD-21-Case-Example-Map.pdf | 422 Kb | 15/02/11 20:59 |
