School districts and Statewide 9-1-1 administrators across the country are recognizing the need to increase the accuracy of floor plan data for their school buildings to provide vital information to ensure effective emergency planning and response.
Many states are providing funding to help school districts transition away from static hard copy maps and floorplans towards dynamic, interactive GIS maps.
To this end, Cloudpoint Geospatial is conducting surveys of K-12 school properties to create up-to-date floor plans in GIS format which can be integrated into 9-1-1 Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) systems.
Key objectives of these initiatives include:
Creating detailed, standardized, accurate, and complete internal/external mapping of school buildings and surrounding structures - including all floors, stairwells, and outbuildings to provide clear orientation and navigation for first responders, 9-1-1 dispatch, and public safety officials in an emergency.
Identifying rooms by number and use such as a library, gym, storage closet, classroom, etc.
Include all internal and external doorway locations and windows.
Provide 3D data to enable first responders to efficiently and accurately locate a 9-1-1 caller within a building level.
Provide mapping data in a format compatible with existing CAD and public safety systems.
Existing architectural plans such as hard-copy drawings and blueprints or AutoCAD files, can be used as source data for GIS maps. However, they typically require scanning, georeferencing, or a data format conversion from AutoCAD to GIS.
If plans are available, they can be many years or decades old, and often no longer reflect the current layout and configuration of the building. Existing floor plan data also needs to be verified by onsite walk-throughs to confirm accuracy.
An alternative approach is to scan buildings using handheld Light Detecting and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors. These LiDAR sensors can create highly detailed 3D representations of built spaces by collecting millions of data points representing the surfaces of objects. The LiDAR scan data is then used to create updated 2D floorplans representing each building level.
Over the last few years, LiDAR technology has been integrated into iOS mobile devices such as iPhones and iPads (Pro and Pro Max models of the iPhone 12, 13, 14, and 15, as well as the iPad Pro models from 2020 and later). While these mobile devices offer a cost-effective way to scan small-scale projects, creating residential property floor plans, or mapping furniture and other assets in a room, they have limited range (around 5 meters or 15 feet) and limited storage, which make them unsuitable for outdoor use or large open interior spaces.
To achieve the level of accuracy and data quality required for public safety mapping, Cloudpoint Geospatial utilizes professional-grade LiDAR scanning equipment which can achieve sub-inch accuracy, with a range of up to 100 meters (328 ft).
With these devices, a typical 70,000-square-foot middle school can be scanned in three scans, each taking under 30 minutes to complete. GPS survey control points are recorded around the exterior of the buildings and used to georeference the scan data to real-world coordinates.
Processed external LiDAR scan with walking trajectory is shown in red. Scan duration for the image below was under 10 minutes.
The scanning equipment also captures front and back photographs at regular intervals during the scan, approximately every 10 feet. These images are stitched together during post-processing to create 360-degree panoramic views of the interior and exterior spaces.
The scan data is processed into high-resolution point clouds made up of millions of points containing elevation values and RGB color values. Interior scans are aligned to georeferenced exterior scans to create a merged point cloud.
The point cloud data is further processed to extract floorplan information into vector GIS features.
The data is attributed with building level IDs to enable floor filtering, which allows emergency services to visualize building levels one floor at a time.
The final product is a set of hierarchical GIS data layers that represent each building and the relationship between sites, facilities, levels (floors), and units (spaces), with linework details that depict room layouts, walls, partitions, doorways, and stairwells.
These data layers form the basemap upon which school safety plan maps can be designed, such as emergency evacuation maps, lockdown procedure maps, storm/shelter-in-place maps, medical emergency maps, accessibility maps, and first responder orientation maps.
Schools can also leverage this data to manage their facilities, map their building assets, manage interior spaces, produce maps for student orientation, traffic management, event planning, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accessibility compliance, and more.
Publishing this data to state 9-1-1 data hubs puts this critical information into the hands of dispatchers and first responders improving the accuracy and efficiency of response, and ultimately improving the safety and security of students and staff.
For more information on how to enhance mapping information for your school district, contact Cloudpoint Geospatial’s professional services team.