St. Cloud, MN:  GeoComm, provider of Public Safety Location Intelligence®, is excited to announce the availability of GeoComm School Safety, a digital mapping solution which leverages the latest Esri ArcGIS technology to support faster response to school emergencies. The solution provides detailed indoor maps of schools and surrounding grounds, along with critical information needed by school safety authorities, public safety agencies, and first responders for streamlining and reducing response times to emergencies inside schools.

GeoComm School Safety is a game changer for schools by nearly instantaneously linking a 9-1-1 call or the press of a panic button to designated school personnel and law enforcement onsite or in close proximity, displaying the caller’s location on a detailed map of the school and alerting others to the incident. In addition, in schools where there are multiple floors, GeoComm can provide a floor level of a 9-1-1 caller’s location. By empowering school safety personnel and local first responders with up-to-the-minute, highly precise and accurate location information and school maps, including indoors, GeoComm School Safety will help save lives of staff and students while minimizing negative outcomes. 

In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted new rules requiring wireless carriers to determine indoor positions for 9-1-1 calls from cell phones. GeoComm, recognizing the value that new indoor positioning during emergencies could provide in addition to traditional outdoor maps, began developing now patented 2D and 3D mapping technology to map complex indoor environments as well as outdoor areas for use when planning for or responding to emergencies. Since 2015, GeoComm has provided building and campus maps for enhanced emergency response to public safety and security agencies throughout the United States, empowering emergency responders with geographic maps of indoor and outdoor spaces for key building in their jurisdictions. 

“During times of school emergencies, seconds truly do make a difference. GeoComm School Safety is aimed at empowering schools across the nation with a holistic, interoperable solution for a more unified and effective, emergency response. This offering, which improves communication between schools and emergency responders, can serve as the foundation for additional system integrations built on a powerful GIS platform from Esri. GeoComm School Safety is a natural extension of our indoor GIS knowledge and expertise,” said Jody Sayre, Vice President of Public Safety GIS Content at GeoComm.

“The moment I saw the value digital GIS indoor and outdoor maps of schools could provide our communities, I knew we needed to get our local St. Cloud area schools on board and encouraged them to make indoor maps a priority. Through our collaboration with GeoComm, multiple schools in this area now have indoor maps created which provide invaluable information to the first responders by providing a visual representation for indoor spaces throughout our local schools. I highly recommend the utilization of indoor maps to improve your emergency response situational awareness,” former Chief WM. Blair Anderson, St. Cloud Police Department.

To learn more about GeoComm School Safety or to schedule a demonstration, please visit http://www.geocomm.com/school-safety/.