Every door deserves to be found: Data equity in emergency response

In an emergency, the difference between finding an address and finding a person can be measured in minutes—and those minutes can affect the outcome.

Imagine two people experiencing a cardiac arrest at the same moment.- 

The first person is Georgie.-He’s a 38-year-old father of two, living in a single-family home at 123 Main Street. When he calls 9-1-1, he provides a precise civic address, and responders can navigate directly to his front door.- 

The second person is Gary. He’s a 48-year-old executive, living in condo unit 2804 in the Huckleberry Building, which is one of several in a sprawling strata complex. The official civic address of the complex may be the same as hundreds of others. The internal (private) roads, multiple buildings, unit numbers, and entrance locations that responders need to locate him may not exist in the city’s authoritative mapping data.- 

Both callers need help. Both deserve the same emergency response.- Yet one may wait longer, simply because the data needed to find them doesn't exist in the systems responders rely on.- 

That is a data equity problem.- 

For decades, civic addressing has worked reasonably well for traditional neighbourhoods made up of single-family homes and duplexes. Each structure has a clearly assigned address that can be used for navigation, dispatch, and emergency response.- 

But today's communities are increasingly complex.- 

People live in:-

• Large strata developments- 
• Mobile home parks- 
• Retirement communities- 
• Post-secondary campuses and residences- 
• Resort properties- 
• Mixed-use developments- 
• etc.- 

In many of these settings, hundreds of people may share a single civic address yet live in separate buildings, wings, floors, or units.- And all of these may sit on different private roadways within the property.- 

When the authoritative data is missing this sub address information, emergency responders are often left searching for the emergency. They are technically "at the right address" but not yet at the right location.

The equity lens-

When we talk about equity, we often think about ensuring people have equal access to services and opportunities.-

Emergency response should be no different.- 

A resident living in a detached home should not have a location advantage over:- 

• A university student in residence- 
• A senior living in a retirement complex- 
• A single mom living in affordable housing- 
• A family living in a condominium tower- 

Yet that is exactly what happens when authoritative GIS data fails to represent where people actually live. Location data that stops at the front gate of a complex is not equitable location data.- 

Why it matters for emergency response

Next Generation 9-1-1 enables richer location information, improved routing, and more accurate emergency response.- 

But NG9-1-1 is only as effective as the data supporting it.- 

When critical location elements such as private roads, residence halls, building identifiers, unit numbers, and entrances are missing from authoritative datasets, responders cannot fully benefit from the technology investments being made.- 

The challenge is no longer about whether emergency services can find an address, it's whether they can find the emergency.

A student residence example

Consider a university campus where nine residence buildings share a single civic address.- 

A student experiencing a medical emergency may tell 9-1-1 "I'm in Maple Residence, Room 418."- 

If “Maple Residence” isn't represented in authoritative GIS data, dispatch systems may only have the campus entrance or central administrative building as a valid location, which means all the structures within the campus are located under a single civic address.-- 

Responders arrive at the correct property but still need to determine:- 

• Which residence building- 
• Which entrance to use- 
• Which floor- 
• Which room- 
• And… which road to access the right building- 

All this can take minutes, when every second matters.- And depending on the emergency, seconds can be the difference between life or death.- 

Closing thought