Jonathan,
Good afternoon. Per your comments below, Ill try to keep this simple. As a former military and airline pilot I am acutely aware that there is not one panacea coordinate system. Latitude/longitude is appropriate for worldwide aviation and sea going navigation. In a past life, I was trained in UTM for surveying and so on. However, the most fundamental role any government can have is the protection of its citizens. On an international basis, that mission falls to the armed forces. On a local basis, that mission falls to the first response community. Ongoing efforts in the United States which are driving the legislative and policy efforts to incorporate use of USNG are coming primarily from the first response community because 35% of their calls go to a location without a street address. It is not only a significant problem, it is a HUGE problem that is becoming compounded by the rate at which individuals are unplugging their hard wired land lines in lieu of cells phones only. Thus, there is a need for a geolocation STANDARD for first response. And if you know anything at all about this community you would know everything is about standards. It does no good to call a fire crew from the next city over if their hose couplings wont work on your towns fire hydrants. So a question. If not USNG as the language of location for first response, then what? The reason adoption is taking off in the US is because everyone that has honestly considered that question comes back to the same conclusion - nothing beats the USNG/MGRS coordinate system in the realm of first response. A system which had an original design criteria of an 8th grader must be able to learn it 15 minutes, has just as much utility in the first response community as it does in the last response military community. And by extension, for the first response community to be able to use it effectively, the public must also know how to use it. Consequently, there must be a standard for this purpose and only ONE standard, otherwise you dont have a standard. Thus, the concern about promotion of other coordinate systems that are inferior on many levels. Now that I have your attention, I believe you and the rest of the OSGeo community would be well served by spending some time truly learning about this issue. In so doing, Im sure the open minds among you will come to the conclusion that USNG/MGRS is the answer to the issue I am addressing. OSGeo could do the world a heap of good in doing so. Cheers, Steve From: Jonathan Moules [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, July 30, 2015 7:39 AM To: '[email protected]' <[email protected]>; '[email protected]' <[email protected]> Subject: RE: [OSGeo-Discuss] Munich Orientation Convention, Mapcodes, and All the Rest Hi Steve, * A little research on the topic of USNG/MGRS and how it works would be of benefit to those who wish to slam a worldwide referencing system created after WWII when a NATO armed forces business review determined the Allies got too many people killed trying to use latitude/longitude when street addresses dont work. The answer isnt hypothetical, its written in blood. Ive not seen anyone slam the MRGS. I did point out myself that it serves a slightly different, albeit somewhat overlapping purpose to those other systems that have been highlighted earlier. Its clearly great for the military and I have little doubt itd be similarly useful for first-responders. That said, that doesnt mean its a perfect fit for the civil world where military or even first-responder discipline is in short supply. * (two less than a phone number, and who cant remember that?) Lots-of-people cant remember them (http://www.engadget.com/2005/03/12/cant-remember-phone-numbers-youre-not-al one/ - or http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/7885227/Most-people-cannot-rememb er-partners-mobile-phone-number.html) An online test to assess the [UKs] ability to recall sequences of numbers found nine in 10 cannot remember a mobile phone number after an interlude of just five seconds Im not sure how your examples show MGRS as superior. In the first case the problems appear to have been institutional, and in the second its a lack of navigation/map-reading skills on the part of both the teacher and the first wave of responders. In neither case would MGRS or any other system been helpful. If you dont know where you are, you cant communicate, and if the people youre communicating with arent listening, theres little benefit to communicating in the first place. I dont know what the solution is, but it doesnt seem like MGRS would be the panacea you put forth, just like I suspect there are problems with the other systems. But I do agree with you and others that its an important subject. Kind regards, Jonathan From: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Steve Swazee Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2015 3:26 PM To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [OSGeo-Discuss] Munich Orientation Convention, Mapcodes, and All the Rest Dr. Reed, et al., Somehow I do not see a dispatcher saying to a responding officer, "Shots fired at 103132" :-) Carl, you are wrong. On June 30, 2013, 19 wildland firefighters lost their lives when a wall of fast moving flame over took their position at the Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona. Reports from that incident attempt to gloss over a body of evidence pointing to geospatial ineptness at all levels with terms like fog of war and communication clutter. It is the only way those at the top of the food chain can defend themselves from the reality that as those firefighters climbed into their last defense fire shelters known as shake and bake bags, those 19 souls were unable to quickly and effectively communicate their location and request help. A truly unfortunate circumstance given there was a large airborne tanker full of retardant circling directly overhead their position. This incident has sparked an ongoing debate in the wildland fire community - that like the armed forces before it the nations wildland fire community needs to get onboard with use of the USNG/MGRS. Try this: Mayday, Mayday, Mayday 8975 4563. For those who know how the grid works, those 8 digits (two less than a phone number, and who cant remember that?) just passed location for a retardant drop with a location accuracy of 33. On May 22, 2013, grade school students from a Minneapolis suburb were on a fossil hunting field trip at the Lilydale Regional Park which sits along the Mississippi River flats in St. Paul, MN. A landslide there buried two children and a desperate call for help was made to the 911 center. Street address for a large rambling park that stretches for miles one. Ability of a panicked teacher unfamiliar with the area to describe location in the park so someone could understand zero. Smartphone triangulation crap. But it doesnt stop there. Despite the park being in the middle of dense urban area, it took responders more than 50 minutes to locate the incident site, and even after the first wave of responders found the location, those responders were unable to provide information about their location for additional assistance. Outcome? Two dead children. Beyond that loss of life, the incident has cost the City of St. Paul something north of $1.5 million. The result has been a heap of soul searching about how to communicate location when a street address wont work. Carl, from being here for the TC GECCo, you already know what the answer is. In the City of St. Paul, Minnesota, responders are now expected to know what Shots fired at 103132 means. Too bad it took the death of these two children in 2013 to force adoption of a plan laid out in 2011. If you want more examples, I have them responders in Florida are now using 6 digit grid coordinates (100 meter accuracy) to communicate the coordinates of helicopter landing zones and so on. The naïve and uniformed comments I have been reading on this board in an effort to promote a new best thing for communicating location, are troubling in the extreme. I believe part of the charter of OSGeo is service to the common good. Yet, the reality of these plans and promotions fly in the face of the Harry S. Truman quote: It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. In an effort to be the hero who solves the street address problem the hawking of these half-baked plans here and elsewhere (see the recent New Yorker magazine Map Codes article: http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/should-mapcodes-replace-gps?mbid=soci al_facebook) is creating geospatial confusion at the cost of lives. A little research on the topic of USNG/MGRS and how it works would be of benefit to those who wish to slam a worldwide referencing system created after WWII when a NATO armed forces business review determined the Allies got too many people killed trying to use latitude/longitude when street addresses dont work. The answer isnt hypothetical, its written in blood. I return to my original point in response to the Munich Orientation Convention posting. If OSGeo wanted to do something to truly help the world gain better situational awareness, it would stop for a moment and reflect on the realities of these "new" best ideas for relating location - the same way it has inserted itself into the open LiDAR discussion - and begin working to understand and promote the Military Gird Reference System (MGRS). It DOES MATTER what you build into your Open Source Software for location referencing in a big way. 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