Address Management paves the road to NG9-1-1

Through recent blog posts, Esri Canada’s Public Safety experts have written extensively on the Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) initiative and the impact it will have on communities coast-to-coast. In case you’ve missed the NG9-1-1 articles, the team covered a variety of topics including how GIS data accuracy and currency will be imperative for NG9-1-1. This past April, we shared news of the extension to certain NG9-1-1 milestone and dates, but also cautioned stakeholders to stay on course as the urgency to prepare data still remains.

Recently we discussed the importance of data aggregation and how data must meet NENA standards for NG9-1-1 systems to function as intended. One crucial piece to the NG9-1-1 data puzzle is civic address data, which will power the location determination functionality. Simply put, civic addressing refers to the street number and street name of a physical location – most often a home or business. While it might appear obvious why civic address data would be required precisely for something like emergency response service, the NG9-1-1 initiative faces challenges in ensuring that quality civic address data, across all municipalities and regions, will be readily available for NG9-1-1 success.

When it comes to civic address data, the big hurdle to overcome is disparities in civic address data – even between neighbouring jurisdictions. Today, individual municipalities are responsible for managing their own address data and there is no specific standard that must be met. Local governments oversee the assignment of new addresses and the updating of civic address records. Since it’s up to each municipality, it’s possible to see a variety of methods and programs employed to collect, manage and store a city’s address data. Ultimately, with no standard in place the quality and availability of data could differ greatly between municipalities and regions nationwide.

In response to this challenge, Esri Canada has developed the Address Management web app (AMA) - a configurable template that can be used to manage an inventory of civic addresses and ensure their accuracy, completeness, and compliance with NG9-1-1. It can be used by municipalities to optimize the creation, maintenance, and use of authoritative address information. The app has been designed to minimize addressing errors and inconsistencies in order to meet the most demanding uses of civic addresses.

The AMA app can help manage civic address data while ensuring it complies with NG9-1-1 standards. 

The AMA app includes tools for viewing, creating, reporting and editing site address points; and it fully integrates with existing upstream and downstream workflows using ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise.

With the AMA app, municipalities and local governments can easily streamline their address management process on a standardized model, while being able to provide public safety grade civic address data to the NG9-1-1 aggregator.

Wondering how your community can employ the Address Management app in preparation for Next Generation 9-1-1? We can help – get in touch with our team today!

This post was translated to French and can be viewed here.