Hi, I'm a newbie attempting to build a fire service map book. What inputs are necessary?

[BuckySwider]

Hi guys, a mapping newbie/volunteer fire officer here.  I'm attempting to create a fire run book using the "Fire Service Maps" add-on on ArcGIS PRO 2.2.  Some really basic stuff is stumping me already.

I did procure parcel outlines and Streets shapefiles from the county, but I don't know when/where to use them.  I'm going through the tasks and I'm at "Load data into SiteAddressPoint feature class".  Here's what it's giving me the option of doing: 

I suppose I could just forge forward and try to see if the streets shapefile is able to be pulled in here, but I thought it'd be better if I asked first.  And when should I import the parcel outlines shapefile?

Sorry for the newb question.  (And I'm sure I'll have more to come!)

Thanks!  

[BuckySwider]

That is the sixty four thousand dollar question!   Can't really tell.  Probably null, but maybe not.  

Yeah, I can't yet figure out how to use the code block and Insert Values field in tandem with one another...off to yootoob!

[JoeBorgione]

Nope: they are 'not null'...  just like the first two records are not null.  Notice those records (in either field) that are valued as <Null>.  That is a true value!  It just happens to be the null value.  Big, scratch that, HUGE difference between <Null> and ' '  or '     ' or '         '....  That's why I prefer <Null>.  I can see it and I can test for it...

[BuckySwider]

I'm not sure what the input fields that don't have values are...blanks, nulls, nothing.  So if one of those "nothings' comes in, don't do anything to the output (it's already null)......if not, first convert to INT and then pass it along. 

[JoeBorgione]

We are getting waaay off in the weeds.... Let's continue this off line: jborgione56 at gmail dot com

[BuckySwider]

Woo Hoo!  Finally wrote the proper 5 lines of python to copy the strings to new columns defined as LONG.  Used them for the APPEND to the LGIM, and it worked!  

So onward & upward...next it's asking me to append to FireMapIndex.  I have no idea why there would be a input dataset for this.  It's a bunch of page number type stuff for the <eventual> map book.  The shape is a Polygon, though.  I'm really out in left field here.  Suspicions may be that this is the polygon that delimits the map area, but I would have suspected FireDistrict did that.  

Field	DataType	Length	AliasName	Description
NWPAGENUM	String	15	Map Sheet Number (Northwest)	The map sheet page number to the northwest of the primary page
NPAGENUM	String	15	Map Sheet Number (North)	The map sheet page number to the north of the primary page
NEPAGENUM	String	15	Map Sheet Number (Northeast)	The map sheet page number to the northeast of the primary page
WPAGENUM	String	15	Map Sheet Number (West)	The map sheet page number to the west of the primary page
EPAGENUM	String	15	Map Sheet Number (East)	The map sheet page number to the east of the primary page
SWPAGENUM	String	15	Map Sheet Number (Southwest)	The map sheet page number to the southwest of the primary page
SPAGENUM	String	15	Map Sheet Number (South)	The map sheet page number to the south of the primary page
SEPAGENUM	String	15	Map Sheet Number (Southeast)	The map sheet page number to the southeast of the primary page
PAGENUMBER	Integer	4	Map Sheet Number	The fire map book map sheet number
PAGENAME	String	15	Map Sheet Name	The fire map book map sheet name, which in some cases is the same as the number
LASTUPDATE	Date	8	Last Update Date	The date of last update in maintenance database

I think I will skip this on and move on to FireDistrict.  

For this, as I implied before, I'm just going to use our Township Municipal Boundaries.  So the next befuddling task is to figure out how to add one of the supplied "PA Municipal Boundaries" layers and deleted everything except my township.  But everything I find won't let me remove rows.  Not sure if this is the proper approach, but it's all I've got for now!  

[BuckySwider]

OK, and update to this one- I found a tool "Grid Index Features" that you point to a layer and it makes a grid of your choosing. However, in order to create the data fields for the adjacent map fields, you follow that up with the aptly-named "create adjacent fields".  Which is deprecated in ArcGIS PRO.  I have another question opened up about that one...

https://community.esri.com/message/810762-calculate-adjacent-fields-in-arcgis-pro 

One step at a time!

[BrianOevermann]

Bucky,

Think of the FireMapIndex layer as the source for each page of your fire map book. The polygon layer you create (because from all of your discussion it appears that such a layer does not already exist) will be a set of polygons that cover your entire district (or the portion(s) that you want in the map book). See the attached graphic for an example of ours. Our grid has tiles and quarter tiles but yours doesn't need to be that complicated. Ideally choose a scale (zoom level of detail) that you want each page to show and draw your polygons based upon that. You would then need to populate each of those fields that you listed in your message above to enable the OOTB tool to do its magic. There is likely already a data schema for the index layer that you can use to draw your polygons into.

One thing I've noticed, after reading this entire thread, is that you may be having a hard time visualizing what each of these layers should generally look like and what the overall tool ultimately does. While I haven't used this particular tool, and our grid index isn't set up with the required attributes, I would be happy to package up our relevant data and send you--offline--a link to download it from our OneDrive site for you to look at and/or load into the tool to understand the bigger picture.

Offline:  briano at issaquahwa dot gov

I won't get into my opinion of public agencies charging other public agencies for data... Does the County have an e911 entity? Perhaps you can get the data through them. They would likely have site addresses, streets, and a fire district (response entity) layer from which you can extract your particular area.

[MichaelVolz]

Is the population of the FireMapIndex layer with all the neighboring page number information an automated process or is this a manual process?

[BuckySwider]

You need to create it using the "Grid Index Features" tools.  That will create the index grid, then you need to create the fields with the adjacent cell info with the appropriately named "Calculate Adjacent Fields" tool.  BUT, that second tool is not built in ArcGIS PRO yet (it's coming in January in 2.3) so you have to revert back to ArcMap and then import it in to your ArcGIS project.  And inexplicably the field names don't match the LGIM schema, but it's very easy to see which one goes where when you do the "Append" task for that dataset.  

[BrianOevermann]

Michael,

Just a guess since I haven't used this tool... I think if you build your own grid using the schema Bucky pasted in above, you would need to manually populate all of the neighboring page number fields. If one used that Create Grid Index tools (or whatever it's called) I would expect that the tool would auto-populate those fields. However, with the tool you likely don't have as much control over the resulting grid. That may or may not be an issue.

Perhaps you've heard the old saying that every project falls on the boundary of four [USGS] quads. That saying is from the days where system resources and storage were such that you couldn't store a reasonably-sized area in one layer but had to tile it--usually aligning it to the USGS 24K scale quads. Without fail, when I've tried the 'create grid' tools (not the current one but ones now years back) the result puts a set of tile boundaries right on or very near the most important street intersection or feature for that map book! So I've usually resorted to building out my own index grids. The one I used above happened to already have been created and used in CAD by our utility data gurus, so I co-opted it and converted it to a GIS feature class.

Edited for grammar.