A leader in interoperable solutions for public safety GIS and next generation core services (NGCS). Our expert team partners with clients to break down operational siloes and innovate NG9-1-1-ready solutions that are purpose-built for the public safety industry.
DATAMARK Technologies' suite of products and services are designed to support the entire GIS life cycle, from data creation to updates and maintenance.
Our location platform reimagines the lifecycle of public safety GIS data as it flows into Next Generation Core Services (NGCS), incorporating quality assurance checks and error reporting to mitigate risk and ensure optimal outcomes for 9-1-1 callers and agencies.
DATAMARK Technologies offers a suite of indoor mapping solutions designed to bring public-safety-ready spatial data management indoors.
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The Allegany County Department Of Emergency Services faced a common challenge encountered by many 9-1-1 centers across the United States: the need for accurate, accessible indoor location data to reduce risk and save seconds during emergency response. The Department Of Emergency Services, with support from the Maryland 9-1-1 Board, partnered with DATAMARK Technologies to lead their indoor mapping initiative and develop a solution that would work for public safety, school and facility stakeholders.
Allegany County’s Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) and Call Handling Equipment (CHE) systems lacked accessible indoor mapping information. Without precise data, first responders struggled to locate callers and resources indoors.
Allegany County turned to DATAMARK Technologies for a secure, scalable and integrated solution. The team embarked on a data collection mission, capturing detailed floor plans and Geographic Information System (GIS) data for critical locations, including schools, government buildings, hospitals, and apartment buildings. The result was public safety grade GIS data, complete with 360-degree interior imagery for ingestion into the organization’s indoor mapping solution, INSIDE.
In just 25 days, DATAMARK collected and processed the data for all 40 buildings. Leveraging DATAMARK’s cloud-native indoor mapping solution, INSIDE, Allegany County’s Department of Emergency Services gained access to the responsive indoor data directly within their existing call handling equipment and CAD system. The data adhered to industry standard Esri and ArcGIS Indoor data models, providing 9-1-1 telecommunicators with a single pane of glass user experience.
Thanks to INSIDE’s user-friendly platform, non-GIS professionals like facility managers and school administrators can leverage indoor location data by logging in to update room names, Automated External Defibrillator (AED) locations, and attach class lists. These updates are dynamically reflected in Allegany’s 9-1-1 systems, creating a seamless experience for telecommunicators, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics and emergency managers.
Allegany County’s emergency response landscape transformed. With precise, collaborative indoor data at their fingertips, 9-1-1 telecommunicators and responders are now able to garner situational awareness prior to entering a building and can navigate to incidents in complex buildings efficiently.
INSIDE is vendor-agnostic and integrates with existing CAD and CHE equipment.
Buildings change constantly. INSIDE users can easily update data on their own without engaging with a 3rd party.
Make sure that only the stakeholders you choose can access and manage indoor data.
INSIDE helps 9-1-1 telecommunicators and field responders reduce risk and respond to incidents more efficiently.
In the spring of 2022, Idaho’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) was appropriated funding to prepare the state’s GIS data for Next Generation 9-1-1. This effort would require extensive partnership, education, and participation from the state’s 43 PSAPs, 44 counties, and 6 regions in addition to active engagement and facilitation from the state’s GIS stakeholders. The organization swiftly contacted Idaho’s Geographic Information Officer (GIO), Wilma Robertson, housed at the Idaho Office of Information Technology Services (ITS), to collaborate on the effort and set a path forward.
Prior to her engagement with Idaho’s OEM, Wilma was unfamiliar with NG9-1-1 or the role GIS played in all of it. To successfully implement this project and provide continued support to her public safety counterparts, the GIO was required to immerse herself into the public safety universe, learn a new set of GIS standards, and collaborate with internal and external stakeholders.
Before the project commenced, the following goals were developed to keep the team on-track:
To complement these goals and ensure swift achievement, the GIO set out on a road trip across Idaho to meet with public safety agencies in-person, learn about the status of their GIS efforts and hear their recommendation on how best to execute a statewide effort. Clusters of neighboring Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) were already working together in a regional approach, which helped inform the process for moving forward. Based on the information collected during the visits and conversations, a plan was created that included the following components:
Several of Idaho’s regions were already using DATAMARK VEP for GIS maintenance, validation and aggregation. VEP enabled localities to aggregate data to their respective regions, where regional validations could be run prior to aggregating to the state.
The state worked with Esri to develop an NG9-1-1 GIS geospatial strategy and upgraded to enterprise licensing in support of their objectives.
Four GIS analysts across Idaho were hired to work with PSAPs in their respective parts of Idaho. Reporting directly to the GIO, the team embarked on a process to discover GIS data presence, maturity, and key stakeholders in each of the PSAPs.
After the plan was set, it was time to get to work. The team took the following approach to progress toward their goals:
Through this process, the team discovered that people are the cornerstone of Next Generation 9-1-1 GIS data readiness. Wilma’s road trip across Idaho helped bring awareness to the state’s initiative, but continued communication and collaboration from public safety and GIS stakeholders are required to push it forward. Because local GIS is always changing, there is no one-and-done solution for data readiness. Local and regional stakeholders will be required to update, maintain, validate and aggregate their data in accordance with NENA standards for years to come.
NG9-1-1 GIS data readiness is an iterative process requiring robust technology solutions to support the people behind the effort. Idaho moved forward with cloud-native DATAMARK VEP because it is uniquely positioned to facilitate GIS workflows from the local level all the way up to the state. Because the GIS Analysts working on this project aggressively focused first on collecting and standardizing data from all PSAPs in Idaho, the state’s implementation of VEP took less than six months, which enabled the state to quickly move focus to data cleanup and development of workflows with the solution in place.
Played an invaluable part in progressing the State’s GIS data toward NG9-1-1 readiness and supporting and educating local PSAPs throughout the project.
VEP proved to be instrumental in local GIS data validation and aggregation up to the regional and state levels.
Used their expertise to create a strategy and GIS roadmap with progress markers for the state.
Provided time, advice and feedback that acted as the building blocks for this initiative.
“Having dedicated GIS Analysts located near PSAPs across the state has been crucial. This type of work is 60% communication and 40% technology and without their dedication and contributions our NG9-1-1 project would have failed.” – Wilma Robertson, Geographic Information Officer, State of Idaho
“Having dedicated GIS Analysts located near PSAPs across the state has been crucial. This type of work is 60% communication and 40% technology and without their dedication and contributions our NG9-1-1 project would have failed.”
– Wilma Robertson, Geographic Information Officer, State of Idaho
Idaho’s journey to NG9-1-1 is an ongoing effort requiring continued support from the GIO’s office and stakeholders statewide. This project represents phase one of a three-phased approach designed to establish GIS systems and local adoption. Over the next two years, the GIS contractors will pass their data maintenance workflows onto stakeholders in local PSAPs where possible, keep providing GIS support for smaller PSAPs without dedicated GIS resources for NG9-1-1 and mature workflows that integrate personal and data flows within Idaho’s PSAPs. The datasets created for this project will provide additional value for the state of Idaho and will be put to use for other statewide endeavors like Broadband.
When the topic of Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) comes up it greatly depends on the audience as what is conjured in the mind of the hearer. For seasoned 9-1-1 professionals it’s about upgrades to networks, call handling equipment and operational workflows that will result in fewer transferred calls, faster call-processing and rich data, think photos, videos and sensor data, for dispatchers to affect life-saving emergency responses with. Unbeknownst to many 9-1-1 professionals in the weeds of achieving these ends lies a major shift in architecture that embraces geospatial functions and GIS data as core technology. This shift requires local, authoritative GIS data built to a level of precision and accuracy that local data providers have never been required to build and maintain before.
Meeting this need requires new relationships partnerships that have only been loosely established in most places. In Merced County, California Gene Barrera, the County GIS Manager, had provided GIS data for the County Sheriff’s computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system for years but it was in a “just pass the data you’ve got” manner whenever they called for an update. Providing GIS data for NG9-1-1 would call on Gene to reimagine his business, technical and data workflows to not only improve his data but also allow him to aggregate GIS data from his constituent incorporated cities within his County.
When I learned about the requirements for GIS data in NG9-1-1 I recognized early on the gaps needing to be filled in educating our organization about this transition, the relationships that needed to be forged amongst the various stakeholders, as well as the changes I needed to make in my workflows, systems and data to accomplish this task. I was also excited by these prospects because I found another use for GIS that would make the County’s investment in GIS pay major dividends. I also knew that I’d need some expert help to make sure I was taking the best approach possible. – Gene Barrera, GIS Manager, County of Merced
When I learned about the requirements for GIS data in NG9-1-1 I recognized early on the gaps needing to be filled in educating our organization about this transition, the relationships that needed to be forged amongst the various stakeholders, as well as the changes I needed to make in my workflows, systems and data to accomplish this task. I was also excited by these prospects because I found another use for GIS that would make the County’s investment in GIS pay major dividends. I also knew that I’d need some expert help to make sure I was taking the best approach possible.
– Gene Barrera, GIS Manager, County of Merced
In 2018, Gene procured the services of Michael Baker International’s DATAMARK Team to help him create a NG9-1-1 GIS Strategic Plan which would begin the relationship building of the right public safety and GIS stakeholders throughout the County and layout the path forward for the business, technical and data workflow and system adjustments that would lead to NG9-1-1 GIS success. “The strategic planning process was critical because it gave the impetus to bring all of the right people and perspectives to the table. We were able to agree on a plan. This enabled the County management team to support our vision and implementation.”
Once the plan was initially complete, it would be updated as a living document moving forward, it was time to get to work. The project team conducted the following activities generally:
The resulting remediated dataset is ready for provisioning into VEP for future maintenance.
Once this major workload was completed in both incorporated municipalities and unincorporated areas of the County the team had to be built. The DATAMARK Training and Product Support team supported the County as jurisdictions across the County decided to participate. The initial scope of the effort was for the unincorporated areas of the County and the Sheriff’s contract cities. Today, the city of Merced and Los Bańos as well as the Merced County Association of Governments, as proxy for the other cities, are participating in maintenance of these layers for NG9-1-1 and other uses. This took dedicated leadership from the County and determined participation by all stakeholders to bring this to fruition. The resulting regional GIS data maintenance regime has yielded GIS data for use in California’s NG9-1-1 call routing system as well as other county and city information systems.
There were several key factors in the success of this effort, the most notable among them were:
Stakeholders within the locality that rarely interact had to build a rapport for the future and throughout this initial effort. These partners ranged from public safety, GIS, planning, public works and the DATAMARK team. “This effort would not have been a success without the dedicated support of folks from the cities, MCAG, and all of the public safety communications organizations across the County.” noted Barrera. “We were also able to form forge a very productive user/provider relationship with the DATAMARK team as well. They were willing to consider our needs that made the data products and software more productive for us. Through this partnership, I’m proud to have contributed to the success of all of their VEP users and to be the beneficiary of their other users’ innovations as well.”
One of the features that sets VEP apart is the use of “fishbone” analysis to help the validations be more explicit in its differentiation of anomalies. Fishbones create geometry that connects the placed address point to the point that a geolocator would place the same address. This dataset forms a powerful analytical dataset that makes the Validate, Research and Edit phases conduct useful quality control and assurance on these GIS datasets.
Especially in a COVID-impacted world the ability to access the VEP platform from any location with light clients that only need to support a web browser empowers its users to be successful in their NG9-1-1, addressing or other data creation and maintenance efforts. This approach offers freedom from desktop software requirements while still supporting GIS professionals that prefer the desktop editing experience as well. “The approachable cloud-based nature of the VEP platform enabled us to integrate people that don’t want to become GIS experts. This flexibility makes for higher quality up-to-date GIS data for so many purposes.” Explained Barrera.
In the state of Florida, NG9-1-1 is governed at the local and regional level. Florida’s 67 counties are divided into seven regions, allowing the counties in each region to pool funding and resources to implement initiatives at scale. In early 2018, Florida Region 1 was tasked with piloting a process for a regional geographic information systems (GIS) and NGCS deployment which would provide a template for the rest of the state to follow. The creation of regional GIS repositories, GIS data creation, GIS data remediation, and ongoing GIS support became top priorities for Region 1.
Early in the planning process, Region 1 identified several system vulnerabilities related to natural disasters which had the potential to impact PSAP operations and staffing, continuity of operations, call handling, and selective routing of incoming 9-1-1 calls.
Later in 2018, Hurricane Michael, a Category 5 Hurricane, made landfall. This storm would become the strongest hurricane to make landfall in the Florida Panhandle, realizing and exacerbating the vulnerabilities identified for Region 1’s NG9-1-1 initiatives and forcing the Region to accelerate its planning process. Region 1’s 9-1-1 Coordinators and Directors, Addressing Coordinators, Sheriffs, and Fire Chiefs came together to move the project out of planning and into action.
To enable cross-county collaboration and pass the data through a spatial interface to NGCS, Florida Region 1 set out to develop a regional GIS repository. Each of the 12 counties were managing their GIS with different partners and NGCS providers, making it critical for the repository to be truly vendor-agnostic and flexible enough to meet the unique data needs of each county. Region 1 contracted with DATAMARK to deliver the solutions and services required to accomplish this complex goal and implemented their plan in four phases:
To develop a tangible strategic plan, DATAMARK met with each county in the region to develop an effective strategic plan which documented the Region’s current workflows, data schemas, GIS data infrastructure, and staffing capabilities.
Each county maintains separate GIS datasets, requiring each county’s data to be analyzed for accuracy, completeness, and NG9-1-1 readiness. DATAMARK executed multiple data preparation services for the Region 1’s counties to ensure project unity, uncovering thousands of missing addresses and eliminating gaps and overlaps.
GIS data used in NG9-1-1 can never be truly complete, making. ongoing validation an iterative process requiring all new data introduced into the system to meet NG9-1-1 standards before it’s provisioned into NGCS functional elements. In Region 1, DATAMARK prioritized NENA’s Required NG9-1-1 GIS layers and later incorporated additional layers (like forestry, coast guard, etc.) and boundaries as needed.
To streamline the process of collaboration, aggregation, and data sharing between the 12 counties in Region 1, DATAMARK implemented VEP, a cloud-native NG9-1-1 GIS data management platform. The deployment of VEP across Region 1 enables each the county’s GIS authorities to upload, validate, and maintain NG9-1-1 compliant GIS data from a central location. Local GIS authorities no longer need to work on their data in one location, then drive to each PSAP to physically load it onto PSAP workstation and server equipment machine by machine.
Region 1’s engagement of DATAMARK to deliver a complete spectrum of NG9-1-1 GIS data software and service solutions was instrumental in achieving success across several key project categories, including:
DATAMARK’s NG9-1-1 Strategic Planning services provide clients with complete project oversight and transparency. The discovery process creates overall understanding of clients’ existing processes and procedures, allowing them to create plans that fit neatly into their existing workflows, processes, and policies.
DATAMARK’s ability to deliver services and data solutions that support each county and vendor participating in the project allowed them to meet the unique needs of each local authority while accomplishing the Region 1’s overall NG9-1-1 objectives.
DATAMARK continues to support Region 1 with ongoing NG9-1-1 GIS data support services to maintain the quality, reliability, and standards-compliance of its GIS data. Additionally, Region 1 counties receive continued support from DATAMARK’s Client Success team, which delivers ongoing technical solution support, on-call assistance, and education resources after project completion.
While much of the initial groundwork to achieve NG9-1-1 GIS readiness is complete, there is still work to be done in Region 1. Agencies are now experimenting with local data management workflows while working on ESInet, call handling, and other NG9-1-1 system upgrades. As their solutions become more robust, DATAMARK continues to provide Region 1 with ongoing support through monthly check-ins and is available to assist each county and regional aggregation authority when needed.
“As we recover from Hurricane Michael, we’re relying on DATAMARK’s expertise in solving the challenges affecting our ability to keep our community safe and move to NG9-1-1. With DATAMARK’s software, training and services we can improve our addressing issues and create high-quality, reliable GIS data that supports call takers in identifying reliable dispatch locations.” – Jeff Johnson, Director of E9-1-1 and Communications System, Jackson County Sheriff’s Office
“As we recover from Hurricane Michael, we’re relying on DATAMARK’s expertise in solving the challenges affecting our ability to keep our community safe and move to NG9-1-1. With DATAMARK’s software, training and services we can improve our addressing issues and create high-quality, reliable GIS data that supports call takers in identifying reliable dispatch locations.”
– Jeff Johnson, Director of E9-1-1 and Communications System, Jackson County Sheriff’s Office
