Daniel Bishop- GIS Project Manager
April is Emergency Communications Month. Cloudpoint recognizes the often unacknowledged critical public service our nation's emergency dispatch and response personnel perform each day. So we extend our thanks to all the emergency service professionals who assist those in times of greatest need for your commitment.
Cloudpoint’s NG9-1-1 team proudly assists public safety stakeholders in implementing Next Generation 9-1-1 by preparing GIS data for NG9-1-1 from the current 9-1-1 technology. This implementation process, while systematic, is highly dependent upon the present status of an area’s GIS, ALI, and MSAG data. Therefore, each PSAP situation is unique in light of these variables. Clear guidance from the implementing State is critical to keep the many involved parties progressing toward the end NG9-1-1 system goal.
A Prime Example
The State of Wisconsin recently released an important guiding document, the Wisconsin NG9-1-1 GIS Implementation Plan. This document, along with the States Standard’s and Best Practices document, provide guidance on the Wisconsin specific GIS requirements, as well as State and Local level tasking details. While state level details are important and do influence local considerations, this blog focuses on the local level. Cloudpoint works directly with local PSAP/County offices on upgrading their GIS data to the NG9-1-1 schema. Thankfully, the implementation plan does set forward a number of tasks for local entities to accomplish in order to make their data ready for NG9-1-1. The tasks highlighted in the document are:
Migrate to the Wisconsin version of the NENA NG9-1-1 GIS data model (or add mandatory and appropriate conditional fields to the existing GIS data model)
Coordinate GIS data schema updates with CAD systems (since the GIS data schema required for CAD systems may or may not align with the NG9-1-1 GIS data model)
Populate mandatory and conditional fields with appropriate attributes
Populate the MSAG (Master Street Address Guide) community for E9-1-1 compatibility (due to reliance on the E9-1-1 databases for transition and failover after transition to NG9-1-1)
Quality control the GIS data to identify critical errors
Correct quality control critical errors
Quality control the GIS data to validate corrections and correct any critical
errors foundPerform edge matching with surrounding provisioning boundaries
Provision GIS data to the NGCS (Next Generation 9-1-1 Core Services) provider
While the report gives the estimated timeline for local-level tasks in a table, the State acknowledges in the document that these times are estimated averages dependent on the resources available at each local entity: the number of local or contracted staff, the actual number of attributes and mandatory fields that need to be populated, and the number and type of errors that need to be corrected.