Nebraska 511

Seasoned readers of the Director's Desk know that I've had a longtime interest in location-based services: applications that deliver useful information to users based on their current location. Good public safety examples include P3i and PulsePoint. With winter weather beginning to set in, it would be a good time to remind folks about an excellent app from the Nebraska Department of Roads: Nebraska 511.

The Department of Roads travel information website, Nebraska 511, has been around for many years now, and has developed quite nicely. There is a full-featured version of the website, a streamlined version, and a version optimized for small screens. But there is also a mobile application designed specifically for smartphones, available in both Apple and Android flavors.

The mobile version has evolved a lot in recent years, and the current version is very slick indeed. It's great for checking road conditions, traffic in the metro areas, and for peeking at the large network of traffic cameras on Nebraska's highway system.

Next time you're taking a trip, try the "Tell me" feature--which will alert you to road closures, construction projects, and traffic incidents which are near your path.

Tips for using PulsePoint

If you've downloaded PulsePoint, good for you. If not, I wish you'd consider doing so. We blew by my initial goal of 1,200 over the weekend and cracked 2,400 followers last night, which is mighty encouraging. There are a couple of features in PulsePoint I want to point out that I think might be of particular interest, completely apart from the CPR-needed-in-public-place alert that is its primary purpose.

The first is the public safety radio feed. Down at the bottom of the list of recent dispatches is a red tab. Tap it, and it slides up to reveal a toggle to turn the radio feed on and off. Its pretty nice, when you see a big event, to toggle on the radio for a few minutes to listen to the transmissions. You can usually figure out quickly whether it's a big deal or not. The feed is actually stereo: fire & rescue on the right, police on the left. If you use earbuds, you'll get the separation. I use a Bluetooth connection to send the audio to my car stereo, which is really slick. The balance control allows me to emphasize and/or mute one or the other if I wish, and the left-right separation actually lets you make sense of both at the same time.

The second feature is the ability to set alerts for other kinds of calls, like structure fires and hazmat incidents. I particularly like the alerts for vehicle accident and expanded vehicle accident. These calls are the injury traffic crashes to which Lincoln Fire & Rescue responds. The expanded collisions are the ones with multiple patients, severity or where the mechanism of injury is more dangerous, such as an overturned vehicle, a car-motorcycle collision, and so forth.

The expanded injury crashes involve several emergency vehicles, unlike your typical fender-bender. Thus, setting an alert for one or both of these accident types will give you advance notice of a potential traffic snarl. These alerts will usually arrive on your phone even before the dispatcher has had the opportunity to speak the words needed to send the first responders. In PulsePoint, go to settings, and you'll see the list of incident types you can choose from for alerts on your phone.

Here's a few more tips to consider:

• Didn't sign up for CPR alerts because you haven't had training in a while? No problem, the American Heart Association can teach you the basics in 90 seconds. There are other ways to help at a cardiac arrest, too: look for the AED, wait outside to show the paramedics the way, comfort the family, etc..  Don't let the fact that you're not carrying a card in your wallet keep you from being the one.

• CPR alerts will only be received when the incident is at a public place and you are within a quarter mile. All the other alerts, though, are not tied to your location--you will get those on fires, crashes, hazmat, and so forth regardless of where you are.

• You can follow other agencies, for example a city to which you are traveling, or your Mom's home town--as long as it is a PulsePoint-connected community.

• While hands-only CPR is easy, more training is always a good thing. The Red Cross offers lots of opportunities for individuals, and if you're an employer or the team leader, maybe you should sponsor one for everybody!

• Too many alerts bothering you? I'd suggest picking only CPR and Expanded Vehicle Accident to reduce the volume and still get the ones that are most important. Also, find the "do not disturb" setting on your phone, and select those times of day that you do not want to be buzzed.

• Do you tweet? If so, the PulsePoint foundation has a twitter feed that republishes all the CPR alerts that are sent out from agencies nationwide, which is rather interesting to see @1000livesaday.

• If you happen to have an Apple Watch, these notifications will work very well on your wrist.

• PulsePoint is a smartphone app, but it will run on your iPad. It's a bit tricky to find it in the app store: you'll need to search for PulsePoint (it is NOT the blue Elevon app), then tap the "iPad Only" link at the top left and change to "iPhone only."

• PulsePoint AED is a companion app for crowdsourcing information about AEDs in the community. The icon looks the same, but is yellow. Information from the public helps us keep the data current, and we appreciate your contribution to the database!

Get the app. Save a life.

We are launching PulsePoint in Lincoln today, a remarkable application that connects willing citizens with nearby emergencies where CPR may be needed. If you have the PulsePoint app installed on your smartphone, and you are within walking distance of a sudden cardiac arrest in a public place like a shop or restaurant, you'll receive an alert and directions.


PulsePoint is free. It requires no information from the user. All you is download it from iTunes or Google Play, and go through the iPhone setup or Android setup. I'm hoping to convince a few thousand people in Lincoln to do so in the next year. It can just sit there next to Angry Birds until the day it might help you become a hero.

If you're a law enforcement officer, firefighter, health care professional, Red Cross volunteer, or dispatcher, you should have PulsePoint. If you're a teacher, mechanic, bartender, or anyone else who carries a smartphone, you should have it too, because you may be the one who is in the right place at the right time to save a life.

PulsePoint is relatively new, but already in use in hundreds of localities. Reports of saves are beginning to trickle in from around the country. It is inevitable that more stories like this will continue to unfold:


Along with the CPR alerts, PulsePoint also has some other nice features: you can follow all the Lincoln Fire & Rescue dispatches, there is a toggle to monitor our public safety radio feed, and you can sign up for other kinds of alerts such as injury traffic crashes and fires. PulsePoint is tapping directly into the 911 Center's computer-aided dispatch system, so you are receiving these alerts at the same time or even slightly before the first responders.

Given our volume of cardiac arrests (and the fact that only a fraction of those occur in public places) the number of PulsePoint CPR alerts in Lincoln will be relatively small--a handful per month. But these incidents do happen, as these great local stories from earlier this year attests. There is always the possibility that you will be the person who is able and willing to help save a life.

iPHONE SETUP



ANDROID SETUP

A walk in the dark

Last month, one of our city council members, Leirion Gaylor Baird, emailed me. One of her constituents had been hosting an event at a hotel in Lincoln's dynamic Haymarket area, and got involved in a discussion of one of the workers, a young woman. As they were chatting, she told him that she liked her job at the hotel, but was a little concerned because she had to walk quite a distance to her car at night, after her shift ended.

This citizen thought that perhaps a couple people he knew on the city council could come up with an idea that could help in this situation. Interestingly, I had heard the same concern voiced by two other employees of restaurants. Tonja and I are habitual eaters-of-appetizers-at-the-bar types, and tend to strike up conversations with our servers. Parking is a significant expense for downtown workers, and many restaurant employees have to snag their spot quite a distance away, to find an affordable option.

I didn't have any great ideas for the council member, other than to opine that it might be worthwhile for some businesses to offer a buddy system, allowing another employee to spend 15 minutes on the clock in order to accompany a lone employee going off duty after dark to a remote parking spot.

A couple of days ago, though, I spotted Companion, a smartphone application with exactly this problem in mind. Someone mentioned it on Twitter, and remarked how much her college-student daughter appreciated the app. Companion seems to be targeted towards college students, but the concept would work equally well for a shift-worker facing a jaunt of several blocks during the hours when a sense of discomfort may be present.


I have no personal experience with Companion, and I'm sure there are other apps with a similar function. In fact, one that I use everyday, Glympse, could be used for this purpose. I generally send a Glympse to Tonja when I'm heading home, and occasionally to someone I'm meeting when I am running late. I've even used Glympse to provide the family with an update on my travels when I am out of town. There are several things I especially like about Glympse.

Here's something men virtually never consider when searching for a parking spot: how safe will I feel when I come back to the car? We think about how close is it, how expensive in it, but I don't think men are ever thinking about their personal safety when they come back to the car after the game, the movie, or the class. A man would rarely pass up an otherwise prime parking spot because there isn't a streetlight nearby, or there's a sketchy alley to traverse. Yet, I think these are factors that women consider reflexively.

Juice up your battery, pick an app, and you needn't be entirely alone as you head home.

Impulse purchase pans out

In technology terms, 2010 was a long time ago. Back then, I was an early adopter of the original Apple iPad, and quickly found that it was a useful device at work. I admit it: I have a problem with gadgets. My smartphone habit goes way back to the Palm OS, and my handheld organizers even earlier. I had made up my mind, though, that there was no way I was buying an Apple Watch. And then....

A couple Sundays ago, I accompanied my lovely wife and daughter to the mall in Omaha. Ugh. There's nothing for a man there, and only a couple options that won't cause downright pain. I debated, then zigged left to the Apple Store, rather than zagging right to Scheel's. I found myself ogling Apple Watches instead of bicycle accessories and fly rods. 

I suppose I was ripe for the picking. I've always been a watch-wearer, and the Apple Watch proved to be less bulky in person than it looked in photos. The friendly associate said, "You should try it on." I swallowed hook, line, and sinker. A few minutes later I stumbled out the door, dazed, carrying a little white bag. They just make it too doggone easy. 

After a couple of weeks, I actually like my impulse purchase. It's great to get notifications on my Apple Watch of incoming text messages and emails. I don't have to dig for my iPhone. I can discretely glance at my watch during meetings without disrupting things. At home, my iPhone can stay on counter or plugged into the charger,  but I can still get check my emails and messages while puttering in the garage or out on the deck, or just kicked-back across the room.

I've only answered one phone call on my Apple Watch. It worked fine on both ends of the call, although I was alone in a quiet room at the time. I was hoping no one would walk by and see me channelling Dick Tracy. (How badly does this reference date me?)

The Apple Watch experience has me thinking about more sophisticated public safety applications for wearable technology. At one time, I thought Google Glass might be a breakthrough in this regard. Now, I think the smartwatch has good potential for doing things like delivering the patient's vital signs to the paramedic's wrist; or the tornado warning, the wanted bulletin, and the critical incident alert. I can see the potential of location-based information like that served up from P3i,  delivered to the user on a wearable device.

It's not just a pipe dream. I already have an application that sends notifications to me about certain types of major incidents. I get the alerts to my iPhone and now on my Apple Watch, too. It tickles my wrist to let me know of an emergency response like this one on Wednesday, and it usually does so several seconds before the 911 center has even been able to say the words on the radio necessary to dispatch the responders to the incident. You'll be hearing more about this on my blog and in the local news in coming weeks.

Technology dependence

Those who know me, even in passing, generally realize that I'm interested in technology. Probably because this is so well known, I am often asked to serve on advisory groups, committees, and such when the issue at hand is technological. In reality, my reputation exceeds me, but nevertheless, it has stuck.

This week, two meetings on matters technological caused me to think. The first was a rather informal get together at the Lancaster County Emergency Operations Center. This one was intended as a demonstration for those in attendance of some of the web-based applications we have, both public and internal, that assist in managing critical incidents. The second was a meeting of the FirstNet Working Group, which I was drafted to chair. FirstNet is a nationwide initiative to deploy a secure, interoperable, public safety broadband communications network.

Both of these meetings made me think about how much we rely on technology these days, and to reflect on our capabilities, in public safety, of continuing to function smoothly when the technology is not available or is crippled by a castastrophe. The catastrophe might be as small as a power outage, or as large as a tornado. How would we do without our web maps, field reporting systems, instant messaging, remote monitoring, and so forth?

There is a risk in our dependence on technology that we will lose important skills that we will most need on the worst day. Every public safety agency ought to have a continuity-of-operations plan of some sort, and ought to exercise from time to time, so they do not lose their ability to function in a disconnected world with no cell phone, no Internet connection, and no Google.

As my pal Sgt. (Ret) Mike Siefkes always said, "A luxury once tasted becomes a necessity." Technology can be helpful and very valuable, but we should try to avoid a situation where it becomes so critical as to constitute a necessity. We need to refresh our recollection, now and then, that a patient can still be treated, a crime investigated, a fire suppressed, an evil-doer arrested, without an MDC, WLAN, PCR, MACH, NCIC, PDMS, or any other alphabet soup.

Heck, there was a time when you could actually drive to an unfamiliar address without GPS. Be sure you still can. By the way, once you unfold this, you will never be able to make it look like this again.

Pretty good response

Last week's post about cleaning up our data pertaining to the location of AEDs in Lincoln got a pretty good response. A couple dozen AED registrations followed, and a few photos of AEDs in their context were added by users as well.

Several of these updates were made using PulsePoint AED, the free smartphone app made specifically for the purpose of collecting information about where AEDs are located in the community. Over the weekend, a big article by Erin Andersen in the Lincoln Journal Star gave a perfect example about how an AED in the workplace saved a life.

I'm certain there are more AEDs out there we don't have registered, though, and plenty of photos that could be collected using the handy "add photo" function in PulsePoint AED. Is one of them at your workplace?

PulsePoint AED is a companion app to PulsePoint Respond, which we hope to launch later this year in Lincoln. If you've followed my blog for a few years, you know that I've been interested in the technology of location-based services, which has been a frequent topic here. I can think of few other examples of how this technology can improve public safety than PulsePoint. Here is a short piece from ABC World News Tonight earlier this year that explains why:

You can help

PulsePoint is coming to Lincoln. In preparation for its launch, we have been working to improve the accuracy of the database about Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs). Lincoln Fire & Rescue maintains a registry of AEDs, and this is the source for the location information needed by PulsePoint. People who manage facilities can register or update the information about their AEDs at LF&R's website using a simple online form. Registration is actually required by State law.

Ordinary citizens, however, can also help us--if they use an Apple or Android smartphone. Here's how: download the free PulsePoint AED app. Whereas PulsePoint aims to notify citizens of cardiac arrests in public places near their current location, PulsePoint AED is designed to crowd-source information about the location of AEDs in the community. Data collected via PulsePoint AED is fed to PulsePoint Respond.

If you see an AED in Lincoln, open the PulsePoint AED app to check if it shows up on the map. If not, tap the plus sign to add it. You can also use your smartphone to take a snapshot of the AED. We'll double check the data, approve the submission, and within a short time it will be added to the map. If you see an AED that is already on the map but lacks a photo, take one and submit it. Try to take the photo with a little of the context around it, like the one below in the lobby of Hall of Justice.

We know there are lots of AEDs out there that we don't know about. We also suspect there are others that have been moved, or been retired. We'd really like to clean the data up, so we can maximize the chance that citizen-rescuers can find a nearby AED in the event of a cardiac arrest.

Screenshot from my iPhone

HunchLab 2.0

A few weeks ago, we began piloting HunchLab 2.0 in Lincoln. HunchLab is a crime forecasting product from Azavea. HunchLab seeks to forecast crime by analyzing historical crime data and other information related to crime, such as weather, population density, and land use. HunchLab uses these data to predict the most likely areas for crime today, in eight hour blocks.

The output from HunchLab consists of a map of Lincoln containing a few dozen color-coded cells about the size of two square blocks. These are areas where the risk of crime is forecast to be heightened during the prediction period. These cells are approximately two blocks square. The colors represent the particular crime type for which the elevated crime risk is predicted.

HunchLab predictions are based on the analysis of Lincoln's crime data for the past five years. Where crime has occurred in the past provides a good clue as to where it will occur in the future. This is particularly true for recent crime, so crimes occurring in the immediate past are given more weight. Historical data also reveals patterns in time: crime has large peaks and valleys across the calendar and the clock.

Population density is an excellent predictor of many crime types, as is income. Densely packed low-income neighborhoods suffer more crime than sparsely populated suburban neighborhoods. Land use and zoning impacts crime. Retail businesses, such as convenience stores, restaurants, hotels and motels, grocery stores, and so forth draw people together so the chance of offenders and victims encountering one another is increased. In addition, certain kinds of businesses are related to a significantly elevated risk of crime at or around the business, such as bars and liquor outlets.

Essentially, when you gather all these kinds of data together, you can make informed predictions about where crime is most likely to occur. All of the factors that go into the prediction are based on research about the causes and correlates of crime. In fact, the commercial product emerged from research conducted at Temple and Rutgers. HunchLab goes a step further, and tests the predictions: how well did the cells identified by HunchLab’s algorithm perform in predicting where the crime actually occurred in subsequent time periods? One of the distinguishing features of HunchLab is the ongoing testing of the model, and machine learning that adjusts the predictions on the fly.

HunchLab is far better at predicting crime locations than random distribution. Although Hunchlab is predicting crime at places where most seasoned Lincoln Police Officers would recognize higher risk from their experience, there are other places that aren’t so obvious. It is also worth noting that not all Lincoln police officers are equally "seasoned."

We have helped out with the development of HunchLab 2.0 by providing data and feedback, and we are one of a handful of agencies piloting the application. For a more detailed description of HunchLab under the hood, the underpinning in criminological theory, and the research upon which it is based, go here.

Predictive analytics are getting a lot of attention in policing these days, but the same techniques can be applied to fire and EMS work. I blogged about this a few years ago, when the concept was still pretty new. Here in Lincoln, it is possible to predict fairly accurately both where we'll be sending fire engines and medic units, and when those responses will be occurring. We are using this knowledge more than ever to make informed decisions about our operations at Lincoln Fire & Rescue.

Found on ebay

At Monday's city council meeting, I was explaining some of the vulnerabilities of our aging radio system, which was born in 1987. We have a number of components that are no longer manufactured, are now obsolete, but are still important to our system. They have names like IEA, GETC and IMC, but the one I choose as my example for the city council was the site manager, a computer.

Public safety radio systems have used computers to control major functions for decades now, and the site manager is one of several our system uses. The site manager controls various functions, chief among which is access: it decides which radios are able to operate on the system, and excludes those that are not authorized.

Our site manager is a DEC MicroVAX 3100-90. This model was released in 1993, the same year Sleepless in Seattle was released. It was installed in 1997, replacing an earlier VAX model. The manufacturer, DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) folded when it was acquired by Compaq in 1998, which also went away, acquired by Hewlett Packard in 2002.

The MicroVAX 3100-90 has a 72 MHz processor. My iPhone has a 1.3 GHz processor. Thus the processor in my phone is 18 times faster than the site manager. The MicroVAX has 128 MB of memory, compared to 1 GB for my phone. If the site manager were to fail, we would be scrambling to find a replacement. Could we quickly find a hardware platform upon which we could install the operating system and application software to take over the function?

During my testimony Monday, I told the council members that while they had been debating other issues on the agenda, I found a DEC MicroVAX 3100 for sale on eBay for $74.95. I wasn't joking. It was in the vintage computer section. My point was emphasize that we have stretched some of our public safety radio infrastructure a long, long way.

At the dawn of the age

I blogged last week about the birth of Lincoln's public safety mobile data project, in 1994. The data system that powers LPD's extensive information resources, however, predates that by another fifteen years. I ran across this little excerpt from "News Beat 814", a short-lived newsletter published at the police department in the 1970s. 814 was radio code for "headquarters." I think young Sgt. Larry Barksdale was the editor, as I recall. You can click the image for a little larger view.

This paragraph came from the January 5, 1976 edition of the newsletter. That's before Microsoft, before the IBM PC, before Apple: at the dawn of the information technology age in policing. The article went on to say that the department planned to computerize records by the end of 1978. It ended up taking a year longer, but the result--constantly enhanced and refined--still fuels the police department's records management system.

Did what we had hoped to do

Back in 1994, one of the things on my wish list was to implement mobile data computers in patrol cars for Lincoln police officers. Clair Lindquist, our IT manager, and Sgt. Todd Beam were my collaborators. We occasionally walked downtown for lunch, often accompanied by Tim Travis from the City Information Services Division.

The four of us brainstormed at the food court from time to time about exactly what we hoped to accomplish with mobile data, and how we could get there. While delivering dispatch information and messaging between units were two of the functions we sought, our real dream was to give officers in the field access to the same rich information resources they enjoyed at headquarters, where they could use terminals to access our growing database: the LPD Records Management System.

I had some ideas; Clair, Todd, and Tim, though, had something more: talent. The next few years involved a flurry of activity. A bond issue was floated to upgrade the radio system to support mobile data; we ported much of our RMS to .html output that could be consumed in a browser; we sought grant and budget funding to support the efforts, and so forth. There was a political side, too. Not everyone at LPD was on board with the concept, and naysayers were flexing their muscle. I remember very well being called out at a City Council meeting by a council member who "had heard from several officers" that this was an unnecessary boondoggle.

By the end of the decade, though, we were well on the way, Todd was installing mobile data computers in each new model years' patrol cars, and Clair was continuing to add more functionality as opportunities arose. By the middle of the next decade, the fleet was fully equipped. We had also brought Lincoln Fire & Rescue and the Lancaster County Sheriff's Office aboard in mobile data. It didn't stop there, either, as we extended our mobile data network regionally, bringing in a dozen other Southeast Nebraska agencies, such as Thayer County, Milford, Seward, Nemaha County, York, Otoe County, NSP, UNL, and more.

Fast forward to Monday, June 2, 2014. As usual, I was reading a few police reports in the living room over my first cup of coffee, when I came across B4-048400. It was a nice case in which Officer Joshua Schaaf spotted a car with stolen license plates, determined the identity of the two occupants despite misdirection, located some pharmaceuticals and recognized them as controlled substances, and confirmed some outstanding arrest warrants.

The officer had used his mobile data computer to do all of these things, accessing the nationwide NCIC database, the State NCIS database, the Lincoln police RMS, our local mug shot system, and an online pill identifier app from WebMD. Of particular note to me was his use of the "known associates" feature in our RMS, whereby the officer selects a name, and looks for any other names this person has been associated with on any other police reports in the past 34 years. This pretty quickly ended the ruse and provided the true name of one of the defendant who had been deceitful.

This kind of thing goes on regularly these days, but as I read the officer's probable cause affidavits on these two arrests yesterday morning, I couldn't help reflecting on the fact that we had accomplished precisely what we had hoped to do when we started down this path 20 years ago: provided some valuable resources to police officers in the front  seat of the patrol car, and now even in the palm of their hand.

Most valuable perspective

I've just concluded a workshop presentation to several dozen colleagues from around the country on the value of Pictometry's oblique aerial imagery for public safety personnel, such as fire battalion chiefs, police officers, dispatchers and emergency management personnel. Many people are familiar with Pictometry images through Microsoft's Bing Maps. The public imagery available through Bing, however, is not the latest-and-greatest. In Lincoln, these are 2010 images, whereas the 2013 photos we use internally are more recent and taken at even higher resolution.

The workshop was at the request of Pictometry for their annual users' conference. Many of the municipal and county customers of the firm are such people as county assessors and city GIS managers. Apparently in some communities where the city or county have already spent the money to acquire this imagery for such purposes as tax assessment, it isn't necessarily being used by the public safety agencies.

To me, it is a no-brainer. Neither standard overhead aerial photography, nor street-level imagery such as Google's Streetview, quite fills the bill as well as the bird's eye view from Pictometry's oblique images. Whether planning the service of a high-risk arrest warrant, preparing for the potential of a significant working incident, or managing a large special event, the oblique aerial view is quite helpful, and provides the most valuable perspective.

I could sense the topic was timely. My session was well-attended by people who wanted some advice on how to engage their police department, fire department, sheriff's office, 911 center, and emergency management personnel. Many of the attendees wanted to talk in more detail after the session, and I spent an afternoon sipping coffee and brainstorming with people from Virginia to Colorado, and points in between. One of suggestions I made to these existing Pictometry customers was to download the iOS app for iPad, Pictometry Connect Mobile, then to simply hand that to a SWAT team commander or a bat chief. A picture is sometimes worth a thousand words, and these are personnel I would expect to be most likely to understand immediately how this technology could help.

At the summit

Wednesday I was in attendance at the Nebraska Digital Summit, a gathering of government technologists at the Embassy Suites here in Lincoln. I attended a few breakout sessions, and enjoyed some time rubbing shoulders with a diverse group from many other fields. In the afternoon, I was one of three speakers in an hour long plenary session that followed the TED format--in other words, fast--a lot of information stuffed into 18 minutes.

My topic was location-based services in public safety. I demonstrated the LBS application for police that we invented here in Lincoln, P3i, which is now commercialized as CrimeView NEARme, then I talked about several other uses for location-based services in police, fire, and EMS service. Interestingly, the second speaker, who followed me, spoke about the same topic in a broader context: how LBS applications are rapidly becoming ubiquitous in many fields.

We have a couple other location-based services applications in the wings here in Lincoln's public safety agencies. The Emergency Communications Center and Lincoln Fire & Rescue are doing some preliminary work to spin Lincoln up on PulsePoint, an application that provides information about sudden cardiac arrest incidents occurring in public places to nearby citizens who may be able to hlep. We are also experimenting across all agencies with a location-based emergency alerting service, Ping4Alerts.

Like my fellow presenter, I think LBS will continue to be a dominant theme in information technology, as the mobile device becomes the primary way in which we all consume content.

Saw it coming

This article from Gizmodo hit the web this week, and the story was also picked up by other tech sites, such as Tech Crunch. It took a while for the potential application of Google Glass technology to public safety to start causing some buzz, but I blogged about it back in March, using the same examples. That's a long time ago, in the rapidly-evolving world of mobile technology!

Latest view

In my series of posts a few weeks ago on oblique aerial imagery I mentioned that Lincoln would soon be receiving new images to replace the series shot in 2010. That happened yesterday, as the new set was delivered to the City by Pictometry, the firm we contracted with for the 2013 aerial photography.

These new images not only update the rapidly-changing skyline of the City, but they are also shot at even higher resolution than the 2010 images.  Moreover, the City of Lincoln is now part of a consortium of governmental entities in Nebraska and western Iowa that collaborated on the project, and can now access one another's imagery.

Here are two examples. First, a view of Union Plaza in Lincoln, viewed from the west across 21st Street. This would have been little more than a ditch in the 2010 images.  Now, it has grown a big head. Second is a view of TD Ameritrade Park in downtown Omaha.  I believe that would be the Creighton and Southern Illinois on the field. This would have been a busy construction site in the 2010 imagery.

Mobile oblique imagery

By now, I suspect readers understand that oblique aerial imagery has some real value for public safety personnel.  When the chips are down, however, you may need that data quickly, with a minimal amount of futzing, and without access to the computer back on your desktop. I am convinced that in public safety technology, the future lies in applications optimized for mobile data computers, tablets, and smartphones.

Oblique imagery dips a toe in this water now, and the mobile tools will continue to evolve. Here are a few examples. The first image is the historic Kennard House in Lincoln, depicted in this screenshot from my iPad mini running Pictometry Connect Mobile. The second image is the same scene, on my iPhone using CrimeView NEARme.

The next big deal in mobile imagery is location-based services: delivering the images to you based on your mobile device's known location. In the world of tech today applications must be mobile, and this is particularly true in public safety where the workforce is mobile and the incidents dynamic. Pictometry Connect Mobile and CrimeView NEARme are already location aware: a tap centers the map on your current location. Not far off will be the next evolution of this concept, putting the images in motion with the user, perhaps even orienting the viewpoint based on the device's direction of travel, providing more of a sensation of moving through the image without any need by the user to reorient the viewpoint.

Oblique imagery for firefighting

This week's series is about the value of oblique aerial photography for public safety. I would hope that yesterday's post explaining how this imagery might be used for planning and executing a high-risk arrest warrant or search warrant makes sense. It should be pretty easy to translate this to firefighting.  If that house were involved in a structure fire, these same images would provide valuable information to a Springfield battalion chief commanding the fireground.

A great use for oblique imagery in the fire service is for response planning. Fire departments generally identify those locations that present heightened risk, and create plans in advance for use in the event of an incident. Places such as manufacturing plants, schools, medical institutions, high-rise buildings, and apartment complexes are common candidates for such planning processes.

Here in Lincoln, our fire companies are assigned specific places for pre-planning. The company visits the facility in person, inspects to find the location of such things as the alarm panel, Knox box, electrical service, hazardous materials and so forth. A document is produced containing this information. These so-called "pre-plans" are available on the mobile data computers in the apparatus and in the command vehicle. Oblique imagery could be nice to include in a pre-plan.

Let's say, for example, you are an incident commander at the Fairbault, Minnesota Fire Department.  Among the places you'd like to pre-plan is the headquarters of SAGE Electrochromics, Inc., makers of an incredibly interesting product, SageGlass. Your planning results in a .pdf document that contains a floor plan of the facility, the emergency contact information, and the location of standpipes, utilities, exits, alarm panel, stairwells, and so forth.  Wouldn't you think that this page would be a valuable addition to the package? It was about a ten minute job to make it this morning, including a few pauses to sip my coffee.

Click image to enlarge

Oblique imagery for police work

I'm blogging this week about the value of oblique aerial photos for public safety agencies. Today, I am going to describe a typical use case for policing. My example deals with the planning and execution of an arrest warrant (hypothetical, that is) for an individual who is believed to be in a house in south-central Springfield, MO.  This is a common activity in police agencies all over the country, and one that usually involves pre-planning, including a briefing for the officers who will be involved in the warrant service.

Gathering information about the premise is always part of the preparation. An undercover drive-by would reveal the home's appearance from the street.  The view would be much like this screenshot from Google Streetview. It is a two story frame house with columns on the front stoop supporting an overhang above the front door. There is an asphalt driveway along the left side of the house.

A conventional aerial orthophoto would shed a little more light on the target  (the house in the center with the green shingles). The parcel is long and narrow. The driveway goes back to a sizable concrete apron at the back, where a  large white-roofed outbuilding sits. If you go under cover of darkness, take care not to fall in the neighbor's swimming pool.

The oblique image from Pictometry (via Bing Maps) shows the arrangement of these buildings even better. This view is oriented towards the north, showing the alpha face of the house. Note the front columns. There are several windows visible on the south side of that outbuilding.  That might be an indication that it is an apartment or guest house, rather than a garage. There is a small above-ground pool at the northwest corner of the lot.

Rotating around to the bravo side and viewing from the west shows more significant detail.  The outbuilding appears to be composed of a one story section on the south with a door and a chimney (a guest house or apartment, perhaps?), and a double garage in the north portion. Above the garage is a second story with windows.  This could be part of a second residence, or it might be something like a workshop above the garage. There is a low shed attached to the north side of the garage. The small yard between the main house and the "guest house" is enclosed by a substantial fence. We could continue to rotate around to the other two compass points and gather even more information.

I don't know about you, but if I'm going to this place to look for a bad guy, these oblique images are providing me with a lot of very important detail that I wouldn't get from just driving by for a peek, or from a standard aerial orthophoto. Why on earth would I just draw a freehand diagram of this property on a dry erase board, when I could pull up these images and show everyone involved in the case more precisely what we will be dealing with at the scene? And yet, exactly that is going to happen dozens of times today in police departments all over the country.

This is just one example. Hopefully, you can see that oblique imagery would be valuable in many other circumstances: setting up a search area for an Alzheimer's patient who has walked away from home, establishing a perimeter around a building with a barricaded suspect, planning a special event at a public park, visualizing the area around a string of storage unit burglaries, and so forth.

When you've got a little time to prepare, it's hard to beat the oblique imagery from Pictometry, Bing, or Google for getting the lay of the land.

Oblique details

This is Part II of this week's series on oblique photos, a type of aerial photography that is of particular value in public safety applications. Lincoln's oblique imagery is from Pictometry, a firm that specializes in aerial photography and oblique imagery. Not only do Pictometry images provide a great perspective for public safety use, they are also shot from all four compass points, so you can actually rotate in 90 degree increments to get the view from each direction. Pictometry is available in Microsoft's Bing Maps for many parts of the United States, where it goes by the name "Bird's Eye View." The photos in Bing may be slightly older and at slightly lower resolution than Pictometry customers' latest imagery, but it is still mighty good.

Don't confuse oblique aerial imagery with some of those extruded building cityscapes or the computer-generated 3D perspective in some mapping applications.  Oblique aerial images are real photos, not simulated renderings.

Bing Maps Bird's Eye View isn't available everywhere, but a large percentage of the U.S. population is covered, and it's not just the big metropolitan areas.  This graphic shows the coverage area. Some surprisingly small towns are under the blue, such as Grand Island, NE; Bartlesville, OK; Fort Dodge, IA; Blacksburg, VA; Forsyth, MO; and Alexandria, LA, to name a few. To see if Bird's Eye is in your area, just search in Bing Maps. Be sure to turn on either "Automatic" or "Bird's Eye" up at the top left of the map image.

You might also check Google. Within the past year or so, Google has started adding oblique imagery of its own. Here is a coverage map you can check. With both Google and Bing, you'll probably want to remove some clutter.  Look for this little triangle in Google Maps, and click it to slide the sidebar out of the way.  In Bing Maps, you can do the same, but you can also click the link to "Full Screen" at the top right-center of the map to really maximize the image.

Once you've got your map centered, zoomed to your liking, you may want to grab a screen shot. The old-fashioned way is to use CTRL-PrintScreen, which copies the contents of your screen to your clipboard, after which you would paste the screenshot into some other application.  I prefer to use screen capture software.  Snagit is my favorite, but I also use Google's Screen Capture and Awesome Screenshot, which are browser add-ins.  There are tons of free-or-cheap apps and browser plugins for screen shots, and everyone should have one of these.

Check with your GIS manager, County Engineer, County Assessor, or Public Works department to see if your city or county are Pictometry customers already. If not, look to see if either Google or Bing Maps have oblique aerial imagery in your neck of the woods. If you have access to obliques from any of these sources, they can be incredibly valuable to police and fire, and we will explore a couple of typical use cases later this week.