Is Data Driving Your Fire Engine Finding, understanding, maintaining, and mapping spatial data for public safety By Mike Price, Entrada/San Juan, Inc. Public safety service providers everywhere are tasked with serving populations that are growing (or at least remaining static) as budgets decrease and resources become more scarce. In this budgetary environment, cost containment measures may include reducing staffing; redeploying apparatus; closing stations; and—in some cases—ceasing to serve some areas. Nonetheless, agencies still strive to provide the highest level of service through improving internal operating efficiencies, implementing interagency agreements, and creating regional authorities. I am often asked by public safety mapping and administrative staff which datasets are necessary to perform various mapping and analytical studies. They are especially interested in the order of importance of these datasets. I keep careful notes on these essential public safety datasets and have noted which datasets provide the best value, how incorrect or inappropriate data can damage or derail a study, and what the best sources are for essential information. In public safety, we perform many mapping and analytical tasks that include resource allocation and deployment, dynamic response modeling, historic incident analysis and reporting, and mapping of affected populations and values. These tasks combine to support large studies such as strategic, capital, master, and Standard of Cover plans. In this article, I have summarized my thoughts on and findings about public safety data. Public safety data is a very broad theme. In this article, I introduce and discuss framework data, as defined by the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC). Editor’s note: The author is the president of Entrada/San Juan, Inc., a natural resources and public safety consultancy. He is a licensed engineering geologist with more than 30 years of experience. For the last 12 years, he has been writing articles for ArcUser magazine that help GIS users understand, manage, model, and use data. Although this article targets managers of GIS data for fire departments and others involved in public safety, this data framework can be used throughout local government. 34 ArcUser Summer 2010 www.esri.com