Map app for iap

An Incident Action Plan (IAP) is a component of the Incident Command System (ICS), which in turn is a component of the National Incident Management System (NIMS). How's that for an alphabet soup? Trust me, that's a tiny glimpse into the world of acronyms surrounding NIMS. Essentially, an IAP is a written plan describing the objectives and tactics to be employed during a specific operational period of an incident.

This is the way public safety incidents of note are managed these days. This week, one of those incidents is Lincoln's municipal fireworks display, and it's associated sideshows, the Uncle Sam Jam. This is a big event, attracting upwards of 100,000 people during the course of the day. LF&R Battalion Chief Eric Jones and LPD sergeant Valerie Kinghorn have been doing the heavy lifting planning the public safety operations: schedules, assignments, equipment, contingencies, logistics, etc.--and the IAP.

Chief Jones did something interesting late last week, creating a mapping application that depicts the geographic components of the IAP. He used FireView Dashboard as the platform for the map. Maps are a common component of incicent planning, but this one is not on paper: it's interactive. You can zoom in and out, pan around, turn various layers on or off, and click here and there for more information. The purple polygon is the operational area, where the events will take place in and around Oak Lake Park. Click on any of these images for a larger view of the screenshot.

There are several subareas within the overall area, and a click on any of those purple notes icons to bring up a description of the area or the point associated with it. You can also turn on the aerial imagery, or activate a sub-window with the oblique view from Pictometry. Links within the application take a user to even more resources. It is a nice job of using GIS tools to help visualize an IAP.

Massive cranium

From time to time, I have blogged about the value of oblique aerial imagery in public safety. Lincoln contracts with Pictometry for such imagery, which is a valuable asset for police commanders and fire battalion chiefs.

Our most recent images were flown in the spring of 2013, just as Lincoln's Union Plaza was just coming into focus after several years of construction. One of the signature features of the Plaza is James Tyler's sculpture Groundwater Colossus, which the Lincoln Journal Star indelicately described as a "massive cranium." Here it is in the east-facing Pictometry view of the plaza last spring:

I drive by the sculpture on 21st Street between P & Q a few times weekly, as it is right around the corner for Lincoln Fire & Rescue headquarters. Having seen a few impromptu photo sessions in progress, I have concluded that a picture of one of the kids picking the gargantuan nostril is now among the iconic images of Lincoln. I consider this a good thing, as I appreciate interactive art.

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.

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 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.

Get the picture

Many readers of the Director's Desk are police officers and crime analysts. They aren't just local. I hear from them all the time from places like Anchorage, Tampa, Lexington, Seattle--basically all over the country and even internationally from time to time. I am also getting a growing number of visits from professionals in other public safety domains: fire, EMS, emergency management, and communications. Nothing pleases me more than to spark an idea, or help someone else in these fields.

This week, I've decided to use my blog to market what I hope will be a helpful tip to my colleagues. It will be old news to many, but I continue to believe many others have yet to get the picture. A Friday conversation with two executives from the firm Pictometry reinforced my belief that the field of public safety is not fully leveraging the power of oblique imagery. I've mentioned this technology in a few past posts, but my intention this week is to be much more descriptive about what it is, how to find it, and how it might be used in public safety.

What, you may ask, is oblique imagery?  It is aerial photography from an angle, as opposed to standard orthophotography, which is the view from directly overhead. Oblique images lend a perspective to the scene that is very valuable in public safety applications. Notice the differences in these two images of the most recognizable home in Nebraska, the first a standard orthophoto, the second an oblique view from Pictometry.

Lincoln police officers, dispatchers, and firefighters have access to oblique imagery in several ways.  We are a customer of Pictometry, a firm that is the leader in this type of imagery, so every few years, a fresh set of imagery is acquired.  Pictometery imagery is integrated into many of our GIS applications, such as the City's Public Safety GIS Viewer, NEARme, ORION Vela (the mapping component of our 911 software), CrimeView Dashboard, and (soon) FireView Dashboard.  We also have access to Pictometry Online, a web-based viewer with many tools for tasks such as searching, measuring, clipping, and exporting images.

Oblique imagery, however, is available to a very large percentage of public safety agencies, even if they are not direct customers of Pictometry.  As the week unfolds, I will explain how this imagery can be accessed, and give some specific examples of how it can be used to improve the safety of both police officers and firefighters.

Two years difference

Over the course of the past year of two, Google has been quietly adding oblique aerial images to Google Maps, beginning with the largest cities. These type of images, shot at an angle, are very useful in public safety. Pictometry has been a leader in this field, and their images have been used in Microsoft's Bing Maps for several years.

Within the past few months, Google has added Lincoln to the list of cities where oblique images are available. The oblique images in Bing maps were shot in the spring of 2010, whereas those in Google were taken in the spring of 2012. The difference of two years is quite evident at places like Kloefkorn or Kooser Elementary School, and the Haymarket Arena.  Here's an example, catercorner from Lincoln Fire & Rescue's Station 1. This is the Assurity building and part of Union Plaza. You can click these images for a larger view.

Lincoln is acquiring fresh Pictometry images this year, and I expect the results to be stunning. The prime time for aerial photography of this type is after the grass starts to green, but before the tress have leafed out.  The conditions are right about the time you first see a bud blooming on a flowering crab tree.  That window of opportunity should be coming up towards the end of this month, if you are thinking about laying your giant inflatable Darth Vader (or some other toy) out in your back yard.

Maps dissapoint

Over the weekend, I updated my small personal fleet of Apple products to the latest operating system, iOS 6. I figure it is always best to stay up with software updates, so I bit the bullet.  After playing with Siri on my iPad 3 for a few minutes, I concluded that it was remarkably accurate, but sort of a solution in search of a problem.  I might use it occasionally. I liked the Do Not Disturb feature a lot, though, which will prevent my devices from buzzing all night, but still allow important calls through.

Apple's new Maps application had been getting quite a bit of buzz in the pre-release press, with gushing reviews of its turn-by-turn navigation and Flyover mode. As a GIS geek, that was the feature that I was most interested in checking out. When I opened it for a little exploration, though, it looked like a considerable downgrade to me.  I soon learned that I was not alone: the Internet was a-twitter with map-savvy users complaining about it's inaccuracies, omissions, and problems.

Posting oddities from Apple's Maps app has blossomed into something of an Internet sport in the past few days, and there are plenty of example from Lincoln.  Whittier Junior High School closed 35 years ago, in 1977.  Hayward Elementary School closed 30 years ago, in 1982.  Despite the label in Apple's Maps app, there is no such place as Hatfield Elementary School in the College View neighborhood or anywhere else in the City, and there never has been. There is a Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial and it is indeed a National Park, but it is not on the corner of Jefferson and South Streets, not in the City of Lincoln, nor in the State of Nebraska.

I found lots of other examples around town.  Southwest High School, which opened ten years ago, is missing entirely; but Bethany School, closed for three decades, is still depicted on the map.  Apple apparently didn't get the memo about the State Fair moving to Grand Island, or the skating pond at 15th and Lake Street being drained more than 30 years ago, and they must have forgot about Stransky Park--one of the same neighborhood's real gems.

All these little oddities are amusing, but they have little impact on how I use maps.  The accuracy of streets is pretty good, which is the main need in public safety.  The reason I was most disappointed with the new Maps application was the loss of Google's remarkable Streetview, which I use often, and the lower resolution aerial imagery compared to its predecessor. High-quality imagery is great for firefighters and police officers, and the new application is a step in the wrong direction.  As an example, here is the playground at Antelope park, Apple on the left, Google on the right.

The loss of Streetview and the downgrade in the imagery is not offset by the much-touted Flyover mode, which has extremely limited coverage.  I don't live and work in Las Vegas or New York City, and for my purposes, it's hard to beat the Pictometry images in Bing maps' Birdseye View at the present time.

New view

The recent replacement of the 911 telephone system in Lincoln's Emergency Communications Center also included an update to the mapping software.  Since the old system was nearly 10 years old, you can probably imagine that the new version comes with some enhanced capabilities.  Among these are the integration of Pictometry.  The final work on this integration was taking place yesterday.

An incoming 911 call is automatically plotted on the map, and the call taker or dispatcher can quickly launch the oblique image for that vicinity.  These images are similar to those used in Bing Maps' "Bird's Eye View."  I think that in certain circumstances, the ability to visualize the area of the incident may be quite helpful for dispatchers, who are in a windowless room in the bowels of the Hall of Justice.  Here's another sample image from Lincoln's Pictometry data, compared to the standard overhead aerial orthophoto.  Both of these are excellent high resolution images, but the oblique view has some advantages:

Police iPad update

After receiving my very first Apple product, an iPad 3G, on the very first day of its release, it has become a regular companion.  I previously blogged about my first impressions, but 8 months down the road, it has settled in as the information resources weapon of choice in my extensive arsenal of gadgets and computers. 

Many public apps come in handy during my workday: Gmail, Contacts, Calendar,  FlipClock, QuickVoice, Dropbox, Jumbo Calculator, WeatherBug, Skype, GoogleVoice to name a few.  Since most of LPD’s information resources are Intranet-based, a browser opens the door to almost all of our records management system: reports, case files, master name index, police contacts, criminal histories, vehicle information, stats, and more.  Our web-served mugshots look great on an iPad. 

We publish tons of reference materials on our Intranet: policy manuals, lookup tables, various directories, and so forth.  Web-served legal resources such as the Lincoln Municipal Code and the Nebraska State Statutes, come in handy, as does the City Council agenda, the legislation pending in the Nebraska Legislature, the State Sex Offender Registry, and the Department of Correctional Services Inmate Locator. 

Our shift roll call assemblies (we call it lineup) are webcast using gotomeeting.com, and the iPad GoToMeeting app is perfect when I can’t attend in person.  TipSoft’s mobile application works great for keeping up on Crimestoppers tip,.

Mapping is a real strong suit of the iPad, and since I am a major GIS geek, I have a lot of map applications.  MotionX-GPS Drive HD is an excellent navigation app, and the Google Earth iPad app is mildly addictive.  Google Maps soars on the iPad, and the Streetview feature seems born for the tablet form factor.  I can use some of the web-based mapping applications such as crimemapping.com , and ESRI’s ArcGIS for iOS lets me access my own custom-built web maps of crimes and incidents.  Lincoln has just acquired a new set of oblique aerial imagery, and the Pictometry Online web application works provides access to those images on the iPad. 

Just as soon as the police mobile data application vendors catch up with the rapidly-changing world of mobile computing, I’m betting tablets take over from the hardened docked laptops in a few hundred thousand police patrol cars around the United States.  Click the image below (and be patient) if you'd like to see some screenshots representing examples of how I use my iPad at work.

Pictometry

Every few years, local governmental agencies pool their resources to buy a new set of aerial orthophotos for Lincoln and Lancaster County.  These don’t come cheap, but by working together, we all get photos that none of us could afford individually.  You will be seeing the new photos in the public web mapping applications in coming weeks.

This year, Pictometry won the bid, and as part of the project we not only got the orthophotos, but oblique images as well.  Oblique images are shot at an angle.  You may have seen them in Bing Maps, where they are called “Bird’s Eye View.” Our images, however, are at a much finer resolution than the public stuff.  The image at the right is a good example: that’s the Sower atop the Nebraska State Capitol, with the Governor’s Mansion to the right. 

Take a look at this west-facing image of Memorial Stadium.  Note the reverse image in the lower left quadrant of the field: “WOODHOUSE”.  


Now find the plane pulling that banner.  If you’re wondering, this is the University of Nebraska spring game, a scrimmage on April 17, 2010 that drew a crowd of around 65,000.  Not bad for a practice. 



The orthophotos and the oblique images are valuable to LPD in planning special events, dealing with critical incidents, and simply providing a visual of the scene of crimes and incidents we deal with on a daily basis.  These new images are astounding in their quality compared to what was available a few years ago, and it makes one wonder where the future will lead us.