How a Summer Student Can Fast-Track your NG9-1-1 GIS Readiness

The time to get your GIS data ready for NG9-1-1 is now. Some of the work is considerable, and if you are at a place that may need that extra help, the summer student can help get you across the GIS readiness finish line.

Every year, a barrage of post-secondary students search for employment opportunities to gain valuable experience and enter the workforce. These summer students are eager to make their mark and are often willing to take on all kinds of work in the hopes of adding to their work experience and securing a reference for the future. What if you could take that enthusiasm, motivation, and desire to learn and up your GIS game and help your data completeness at the same time?

With Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) GIS Data Requirements looming on the horizon, there is a lot of work that needs to be done to shore up GIS data to meet the needs of public safety. Improvements to data collection and completeness, detailed field verification, correcting legacy issues and other seemingly arduous tasks are essential work, yet not necessarily the most exciting, and are often tedious and time-consuming. The responsibility of meeting these new demands is not going away, and the pressure will continue to rise as timelines associated with NG9-1-1 preparedness draw nearer. Many GIS teams are already working at or beyond their capacity and the obligation to review procedures and workflows, and to prepare and align GIS data for NG9-1-1 will likely require additional resources, especially in the short term.
Enter the summer student. Oftentimes, governments will hire temporary summer students offering them the chance to explore various public service career options. This is an opportunity for the GIS department to put up their hand and recruit one (or more!) of these eager students.

With limited funding for summer positions available, now is the time to build the case for one of those students to join your GIS team. There are a lot of different tasks they could be assigned, possibly doing some of the grunt work that never quite seems to be the priority, yet it is critical for public safety and emergency response. Consider this your guide to some of the work the summer student can do for you, and how that will elevate your organization’s GIS for years to come. 

GIS Tasks for Your Summer Student

There are a lot of different tasks that a summer student can take on. Here is a list of ten areas where a summer student can provide the most benefit in terms of Next Generation 9-1-1 compliance:

1. Address point placement. It is a seemingly simple consideration that can greatly improve emergency response.  However, repositioning the sheer number of points that already exists can be overwhelming to take on.  Summer students can help move existing address points from the centroid of a parcel to a more ideal placement like the building entrance or access to the property.

2. Data completeness. Ensuring equal access to emergency response services for the whole community means a shift in the features represented in GIS data. We are living in higher densities, yet often that is not accurately reflected in the data, and that data gap can cause time delays for first responders. This data gap could be many things: strata complexes, school campuses, trailer parks, industrial parks, shopping malls, and so much more. Summer students can help by collecting and/or digitizing these roads and associated sub-address data that were not previously required.

3. Ground-truthing. There’s nothing quite like boots on the ground. Sometimes there is a need to go out and verify things in real life. This can be very time consuming, but a summer student can be your source to go out and verify what’s actually in the field. This could be related to conflicts with addresses or understanding how a strata complex has numbered its units and access points or any other number of things where imagery and GIS cannot answer all the questions. 

4. Addressing legacy issues. Correcting legacy data issues or data gaps is no small feat.  Since the data required for NG9-1-1 previously served a different purpose, there are often old legacy issues that were never a top priority to review.  It could include clean-up of placeholder features, consolidating layers, attribute clean up, and data that wasn’t collected at the time.      

5. Additional layers and location markers. Accidents can happen everywhere. Properly identifying and mapping landmarks, trails and parks can really help with emergency response. Summer students can help with installing clear signage along these features and representing it in the GIS data that is shared with first responders.

6. Data quality checks. Topology and thorough quality assurance checks are often neglected. Has it been a while since the topology has been checked? Do you have more “dirty” topology than “clean” topology? Have other quality control checks and analysis been put on the back burner?  A summer student can help with the arduous process of running these checks and identifying the valid exceptions from the real issues (and then even cleaning the errors!).

7. Road feature work. The new demands on the road centreline can also be a challenge to fix.  While automated processes can do some of the heavy lifting, the work will eventually need a manual process or verification.  A summer student can focus on ensuring the road centreline is properly drawn, segmented, and that the address ranges properly reflect the associated address points.

8. Reconciling against the MSAG. The Master Street Address Guide (MSAG) is what 9-1-1 network providers use to route calls today in most of the country. There can be differences between the MSAG and your authoritative data. When the move to geospatial/geodetic call routing in NG9-1-1 is complete, it will be important that the authoritative data and MSAG have been verified against one another and corrections made.

9. Data Comparison. Reviewing data from different sources can be a full time job in itself but it can also help an organization understand what other addresses might be out there being used, even if not authoritative.   A summer student can help by comparing your data with external sources like Statistics Canada to ensure the data completeness.
10. Data consolidation. Emergency responders often maintain their own list of common place names and local landmarks to assist with location validation. Summer students can consolidate these lists which will further support your emergency response agencies. Facilitating the effort to share this data equally with all agencies can improve response within your community.

Advocating for your Department or Team

Here are six reasons why a summer student in GIS is the right place for one of these eager students:

1. The time to get your GIS data ready for NG9-1-1 is now. Some of the work is considerable, and if you are at a place that may need that extra help, the summer student can help get you across the GIS readiness finish line. A lot of the work is temporary one-time work, a summer student can be the answer for this short-term hurdle. 
2. GIS data reflects the policies in place at the time of collection.  With new purposes, requirements, and national standards to adhere to, now is the time to review and update old policies and procedures. Summer students can implement these changes and help the GIS team catch up, ensuring GIS data is consistent moving forward.
3. Accurate and complete GIS data likely already supports the business needs of multiple departments within a local government authority.  The benefit of having a foundational dataset representing a single source of truth goes beyond the responsibility to provide data for NG9-1-1.  
4. There are likely other business areas in your organization that are not yet leveraging GIS solutions who could benefit from the new and improved data. By alleviating the GIS backlog created by NG9-1-1, you free up your existing team’s ability to be creative and start supporting other areas within your organization.
5. You are contributing to the development of tomorrow’s supply of highly-skilled GIS professionals. When it comes time for more permanent recruitment, you will already have a pool of candidates who know your organization, its data, its challenges, and the public safety GIS requirements. 
6. At the end of the day, the NG9-1-1 GIS data requirements are not going away and their deadlines will continue barreling towards us. It is important to have strong systems and workflows in place so that regular updates can be provided to the 9-1-1 system. Setting those up now will do well to keep your organization ahead of the preparedness game.

The effort related to the preparation of GIS data for NG9-1-1 may be considerable, but it is crucial to the success of an effective emergency response. Leveraging a summer student now can help get that GIS data ready sooner. Build your case now, to be ready when summer student placements are considered, and before students begin their employment search. Their work will help save lives and contribute to building a safer community. To that extent, you can even consider the work you (or an eager summer student) are doing to be that of a geospatial first responder. You truly are creating data that is used by first responders to help ensure a timely arrival so that lives can be saved. Go you!

Completing an NG9-1-1 GIS Data Readiness Assessment while you have a summer student can help with guiding the tasks they perform. Explore how to assess your NG9-1-1 GIS preparedness.