Lela Garlington, The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)

A $4.4 million contract to develop a seamless countywide computerized mapping system that will pinpoint every address, fire hydrant, driveway, manhole cover and other roadway features was approved Thursday by the Shelby County 9-1-1 board.

As soon as the contract is signed by the end of this month, workers for GIS Data Resources Inc., based in San Rafael, Calif., will start working on the 10-month project.

The company has done similar mapping projects in Pittsburgh, San Antonio, Oklahoma City and Contra Costa, Calif. The board budgeted $5.5 million for the project, which includes hiring consultants.

The new GIS map will help enhance the ability to reach people with much greater accuracy. We are going to verify each and every address by latitude and longitude, along with every fire hydrant and every light pole. When a new neighborhood is built, we will be on top of it and will upgrade our map as it is being built, said newly elected 9-1-1 board chairman Kevin Fields of Lakeland.

The board also approved $181,500 for funding a dispatcher backup system with computer-aided equipment for the Bartlett Police Department. Bartlett is adding new dispatcher equipment for its main system with $1 million that the 9-1-1 board allocated last June. A remodeled backup dispatch center wasn’t ready for installing the new equipment until now.

Updating the dispatch equipment throughout the county is a crucial piece of the mapping system. All dispatch centers are in the process or already have the new equipment on hand that will be compatible with what is being called Tennessee’s Next Generation mapping project. As other counties also update equipment, dispatch centers will be able to share data and even 9-1-1 calls between different counties.

The goal is by 2015 all 95 counties in Tennessee will have computerized mapping system to better direct police, fire and ambulances to the right location.

If a major incident happens in Collierville and Germantown needs to assist there, 9-1-1 board’s systems technician Harold Truebger said, They’ll all be using the same map. They don’t have that feature today.

With almost a million people in Shelby County, officials will be mapping nearly 6,000 miles of public streets and 482,000 structures with addresses. Workers will vehicles with cameras attached to the roof to capture the images. If an address is obstructed, someone will verify the address with a second visit.

Tim Zimmer, who is the GIS administrator for the Shelby County Emergency Communications District, said students with the University of Memphis’ Center for Partnerships in GIS will work on the analysis and verify the addresses as a part of the project.

The county Emergency Communications District is funded by monthly fees on land line telephones and cellphones.

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