TUgis Conference 2019

Julia Fischer, Department of Information Technology

This meet-up is intended for public sector employees only. Members of the public sector (state, county, municipal, higher education and other associated government entities) will meet, in private, to discuss important statewide initiatives related to Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The participants will be briefed on and discuss current statewide initiatives to incorporate their thoughts on plans for future activities. The participants will also receive briefings and discuss current “hot topics” that are of general interest. Near the end of the SIG, sponsors will be given an opportunity to join the group, introduce themselves and offer a few words about their goals for the conference.

GIS in support of public safety has evolved dramatically over the last decade. Public safety practitioners are excited about, buying into, asking for, and investing in GIS. The evolution of technology has facilitated cross-collaboration in the industry. GIS has also become more accessible, allowing operators in the field and command to leverage the power of GIS in real-time no matter if they are in the same room or miles apart. We are shifting rapidly into an era of geo-enabling decision-makers, field teams, the public, and even our plans. This shift is freeing up GIS analysts to perform the ‘So What?’ analysis—moving beyond “making maps” to providing decision-makers with actionable information to save lives and improve the outcomes of survivors.

Speaker: Tari Martin, GISP, is a program manager with the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS Foundation, where she is responsible for managing a team of technologists in the development of technology solutions used by emergency managers and first responders in the field, at the Incident Command Post, and in the Emergency Operations Center. She also serves as a lead subject matter expert in the design and curation of location-enabled tools and resources for risk analysis, preparedness planning, and exercise design and conduct. Tari holds a B.S. in environmental science and policy from the University of Maryland College Park.

The ENSB, DoIT, MSGIC NG911 Subcommittee, and MCP will present the NG911 GIS Strategic Plan to guide State, County and Local GIS efforts in support of NG911 migrations across the State. This Collaborative effort defines roles, standards, interoperability requirements, staffing and systems necessary to facilitate the statewide NG911 effort. The panel will discuss the plan and the broader scope of the contract in supporting implementation of the plan recommendations.

The Master's Programs at the University of Maryland in Geospatial Information Sciences and Geospatial Intelligence are dedicated to providing the most up-to-date education on geospatial technology, theory, and applications. The courses cover spatial analysis, statistics, programming, databases, modeling, remote sensing, Web GIS, Mobile GIS, big data analytics, drones for data collection, Open Source GIS, and others. Both Master's Degrees and Graduate Certificates are offered. All courses are scheduled in the evenings to accommodate working professionals. All courses are offered in traditional classrooms or GIS labs and simultaneously broadcast online. The online teaching is interactive and dynamic through WebEx, very much like sitting in a real classroom. Now accepting students for both fall and spring enrollment!

In a fully operational Next Generation 9-1-1 system, GIS is the core component in determining how a 9-1-1 call is routed to the correct public safety answering point (PSAP). In order to route calls correctly, NG9-1-1 includes multiple standards around minimum data quality requirements for GIS data being provisioned into the Emergency Services IP Network (ESInet). For the purposes of current generations of 9-1-1 systems a 98 percent accuracy rate is far better than good, but for the NG911, 98 percent isn’t quite good enough. Public safety systems that do not synchronize their data beyond 98 percent accuracy will face boundary gaps and other issues that have potential to negatively affect call routing — perhaps even misdirecting a call. Additionally, the 98 percent figure does not address requirements for the other PSAP systems used. Therefore, exceeding the 98 percent accuracy levels that are adequate today will allow public safety organizations to support all PSAP systems moving forward. But, how do you determine if your GIS address data – centerlines and address points – is ready to support the critical path of emergency response?

Baltimore County, Maryland took advantage of an opportunity to redesign and harmonize the agency’s geodatabases to coincide with the migration to a GIS centric work management system, Cityworks. The goals of the project were to provide a common user experience between database themes, reconcile inconsistencies in the schemas between themes, and provide for the implementation of new tools within ArcGIS. The department’s data fits nicely into five broad categories: infrastructure/asset inventories, regulatory land use, emergency management, districts/administrative, and mapping reference; all of which were considered part of this project. The need for the redesign and harmonization was obvious based on the 25 plus years of designs, the sheer number of different designers and the availability of mature design standards and best practices. The redesign evaluated hundreds of database objects (over 900) and domains (over 450). The project included the build-out of new database environments (production, development, test and training) as well as full implementation of database roles. In the redesign and harmonization, the agency attempted to retire unused or repurposed attributes and standardize domain values, enterprise and asset management attributes. All of the geodatabase modifications were vetted by the data’s program managers. The project included the updating of geodatabase documentation and database objects metadata.

The Feature Manipulation Engine (FME) from Safe Software is a powerful tool set for working with data from different sources (i.e. CAD, GIS, BIM, .csv, raster, etc.) to produce new datasets and products. With almost 500 unique transformers to choose from, FME can tackle almost any data problem you throw at it. This talk will be a high-level review of tasks and tips for improving workflows with FME.