Next Generation 911 (NextGen) rollout?

[ChrisDonohue__GISP]

next gen 911‌addressing##911 addressing

At the local GIS Users group meeting a few days ago there was a presentation on Next Generation 911, how it will differ from the current system, and that it is hoped to be implemented by the year 2020 in the United States and Canada.  I do addressing for a medium-sized city, so am curious how this will roll down to my level, since I am not directly involved in response but the response folks do use the addresses I assign.  Since NextGen 911 will be directly using municipalities centerline GIS data instead of phone company records, this caught my attention.

So some beginner questions:

• Is the project on track for 2020 in all areas?
• Has anyone fully implemented NextGen 911 already?
• What level of effort does it typically require municipalities to update their centerline data so it works with surrounding municipalities in NextGen 911?
• What level of effort is anticipated once the centerline data is in use in NextGen 911 to do the ongoing maintenance?  Is it expected to require extra staffing?
• Is it expected that address points will be a requirement in the near future (sounds like they are not required in the current implementation)?
• Have municipalities and call centers (PSAP) been able to get funding to help implement NextGen 911?  Organizational funding?  Grants?
• If you have worked on this, any insight on issues that have come up?
• Also, on the legislative side, is there a mandate that specifies when the system must be in place?  Or is it voluntary at this point?

Chris Donohue, GISP

[Laurdigio]

"Endangered Species List" - Brilliant.

[TychoGranville]

Hi Chris,

Interacting with the E-911 system is a very small part of my job, but here are some thoughts anyway –

I work for a rural County with 24,000 people spread over 2400 square miles. We have agreements (some formal, others just hand-shake) with the towns to maintain road and address (among other) data for them. We also work closely with our PSAP.

The 911 data is maintained by a combination of in-house staff and vendors. We are using both centerlines and point addresses. Once per month we send the vendor any changes to either of those 2 layers. They merge these updates into their versions of the data (E-911 uses a lot of fields we don't care about in our internal business process... and since we eat costs (see below) we don't spend the time to fill in additional data). We also assist with maintaining ESN and ASA polygons.

We typically spend 2 to 3 hours per month modifying the data for the vendor's use. It can be considerably more if we have to do additional research.

Oregon 911 is already using point addresses. The CAD system looks for the points first, then if it can't find those looks to the road centerline for an approximate location. Since driveways can easily be 1/4 to 1 mile long (and have multiple tracks heading off of them to other houses) an approximate location near the road is not ideal.

Funding from the State has gone (as far as I know) to vendors only. The County is not reimbursed for our staff time.

The only real insight I have is to thoroughly document everything (there's a surprise ) ! We have had instances of vendors asking the same questions about the same addresses months later. It's much easier if you can just look at your notes and say "we told you about this 6 months ago" instead of vaguely remembering that you did research on it "a while back".

Good Luck!

Tycho

[ChrisDonohue__GISP]

Thanks for the info Tycho.  Our CAD system also does address points first, then falls back on centerlines if the points don't work out.

So a question along those lines which has come up for us - would it be worth it to put additional address points at the location where the driveway starts away from the road and give them a unique category like "Access point"?  We've run into similar where the CAD can't find a valid address point because the building is far from the road, so it falls back on the centerline data, which is not ideal. 

Also, some commercial facilities have multiple long private entrances on either side of a property, so even if the CAD finds the right address point, it sometimes gets confused on the best route and picks the longer way when routing.

Chris Donohue, GISP

[TychoGranville]

I'm not seeing any extra points on our centerline layer (the version our vendor sends to us; we wouldn't need anything like that for in-house use). Let me check with the PSAP and our vendor to see what they are doing about that. I already have a meeting set up with both them for next Friday, so I will get back to you after that. I know there have been some issues when a house has been much closer to a road that has a different name than the assigned address.

[TychoGranville]

So, I sat in on the meeting with our vendor.

The CAD will pull up the correct address point but there is no way (nor will there be) a way to have to the software figure out automatic routing to that point. The dispatcher will just have to look at the display and find the best route manually then pass it on to the first responders. Currently there is a memo or flag field with problem address points - I don't know what it looks like onscreen or how the dispatchers deal with it. It would appear that NexGen may not have that as a field in their specification.

Some of the other counties are doing (pilot?) projects where they are adding an "access point" at the beginning of a driveway to work around this. I believe those projects are just starting, and I'm not sure how they will integrate into Next Gen. That type of data creation is not covered under the standard contracts - it looks like one may be able to get some funding for it from the State to help with the cost.

Our vendor's main suggestion was to have landowners change their house addresses so they will fit into the 911 system. Not sure how far that would fly with our public (actually, I do have a pretty good idea...).

Tycho

[ChrisDonohue__GISP]

Interesting.

As for the address change suggestion by the vendor, I suspect their may be a minor amount of pushback from the affected parties..... 

Chris Donohue, GISP

[JoeBorgione]

Also, some commercial facilities have multiple long private entrances on either side of a property, so even if the CAD finds the right address point, it sometimes gets confused on the best route and picks the longer way when routing.

IMHO, at a certain point, there needs to be a distinction between dispatch and response.  Several years ago when I first got into the 9-1-1 game, I met with the fire chiefs of all the agencies the PSAP dispatches for to discuss apartment complexes.  Some have internal addressing that can be worked into the CAD others not.  We all agreed that for those that do not, my job was to get them to the front gate, and thier personnel would take from there.

The routing software we use (Based on ESRIs NA) derives the fastest drive time from one location to another; Station to Incident.  So if I have multiple access points to, let's say a mall, each would need a unique address.  That's fine, but consider this secenario:  A caller is screaming into the the phone that there's a fire, or an active shooter or whatever at "Chris' Mall".  The dispatcher, using a common names table as the address, enters "Chris' Mall" and gets seven different addresses presented.  1: How is the hysterical caller going to know which one is 'the best'?  2:  How is the dispatcher supposed to know?  3: How is that going to improve response?

WIth all due respect, knowing the area of operations is more than looking at a computer screen while enroute.  Isn't that what captians and battallion chiefs get paid for?  Perhaps I just got lucky with the chiefs, or maybe they are really smart guys. ( I think I'm lucky to work with smart guys! )

[ChrisDonohue__GISP]

Joe:

Just curious - for situations where there are multiple entrances to a facility, do you supplement the official address point(s) with additional "access" points so the routing goes to the closest entrance?  Or is there a better way to handle this situation?

Chris Donohue, GISP

[JoeBorgione]

On location, one address.  I don't model access points.  I suppose it can be done if you are willing to train your dispatchers all the various iterations of addresses and they are willing to learn.  Right now I have people asking me every day for new common names, but half of them don't use the common names properly now, you know?  ( I have over 6,000 common names and nearly 20,000 aliases so they don't have to type in much to get a hit.)

If I were a really nice guy and had the time this is how I would do it:

Chris Mall is an alias for the following several addressed locations (points):

Chris Mall Main ST  <1234 Main St>

Chris Mall Back Alley  <1234 Back Alley>

Chris Mall North Side  <1234 North Side Ln>

Chris Mall South Side <1234 South Side Ln>

Chris Mall East Side <1234 East Side Way>

Chris Mall West Side <1234 West Side Way>

For those counting, I now have to maintain 6 separate address points for one mall; I won't even go into how many stores (that come and go) are in that one mall.  Let's listen to the 9-1-1 tape shall we?  (Spoiler alert:  the following may be considered too graphic for some readers; 9-1-1 can be messy.)

"Police and Fire Dispatch, what's the address of your emergency?"

"I'm at Chris Mall and there's a guy with a gun"

<dispatcher enters Chris Mall as the address and is presented with the list above>

"Okay, stay calm, are you at the Main St entrance?

"I don't know; he's shooting"

"Help is on the way; are you at the Back Alley entrance?"

"Oh my gosh, there is an old woman on the ground"

"I understand; can you tell me if you are at the North Side entrance?  Hello?  This is 9-1-1 are you there?  Hello?  9-1-1; are you there?"

....

Hug a 9-1-1 Dispatcher today.  I did....

[TychoGranville]

Our dispatch can't  (currently) use sub- addresses. We just add a dummy point in the middle of the tax lot with the main address on it, and let the vendor strip out all the real ones. We have the dummy point flagged so it does not appear to our internal users (we have custom layer files set up for regular staff, they are not allowed to access to any of the raw data because of things like this).