Mike,
It is a rather unique set of circumstances that make this project
a good fit:
- The county does not map most driveways
- The degree of rural-ness, hills, and trees
- Most trees are deciduous, making the off-leaf imagery good for
locating hidden driveways.
- The region is a mix of economics - some nice newer houses, many
older houses / trailers. The FD must manage their budget carefully:
they declined the $15K app from the county that probably just shows GIS
data with latest roads and address numbers. It wouldn't necessarily
locate driveway entrances since the data doesn't have those. Even if it
showed off-leaf imagery, a co-pilot wouldn't have time to study out a
driveway on the way to a call.
If the official data source did have driveways and a navigation app,
I'll admit it would be hard to try OSM. Or even the fire district I
live in with much shorter driveways, {CommercialMapper} would find
nearly every address almost exactly.
The fire chief is eager to present the project to the next meeting of
fire chiefs in the area. I'll be interested to hear the comments from
the other districts.
Mike
On 2/3/2020 9:57 AM, Mike Thompson wrote:
Mike,
That is a very compelling story. Thanks to you and the other OSM folks
involved for making it happen and to you for writing the diary entry. I
have often thought that OSM would be a great resource emergency
responders because in some areas it contains data that no one else has,
but generally the reaction that I have gotten when I have suggested this
to such officials was "we have our own data", "we have already invested
in xyz system" (sunk cost fallacy), or "how can we trust OSM?". The
exception was a search and rescue group that used OSM to help locate
missing people in the back country because OSM contains trails that no
other source has.
Is this being publicised outside of the OSM community? There are
probably associations for fire fighters and other emergency response
professionals and perhaps someone from the FD involved could speak about
this project at one of their conferences to get agencies in other parts
of the country (or world) interested.
Mike
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