School Safety Indoor Mapping Proof of Concept

Concho Valley Council of Governments 9-1-1 (CVCOG 9-1-1) program, with the guidance and approval of the Commission on State Emergency Communications (CSEC), developed the School Safety Indoor Mapping Proof of Concept (POC) project, which proposed a partnership between CVCOG 9-1-1 and Mason Independent School District to test unique and innovative ideas to improve school safety.

The CVCOG School Safety Indoor Mapping Proof of Concept project was designed to validate and document a program wherein digital, vectorized, and georeferenced indoor GIS maps can be created and maintained by school programs, managed, by CVCOG 9-1-1 GIS staff, and processed for 9-1-1 by the Texas 9-1-1 (EGDMS). The pilot project proposed to ...

1. Create indoor maps of Mason High School for use in the 9-1-1 mapping system,
2. Introduce the students of Mason HS and their technology teacher, Mrs. Diane Bode, to the basic concepts of geographic information system ( GIS ),
3. Assess the concept of utilizing trained GIS students to crowdsource the indoor map GIS data attributes,
4. Evaluate for improvements to indoor 9-1-1 call accuracy using device-based hybrid positioning integration, and
5. Develop a basic GIS curriculum to be taught as part of an existing high school technology class and a road map for other educational institutions to coordinate with 9-1-1.

Both entities agreed to seek organizational approval to participate in the proof of concept based on the following recommendation;

"An indoor mapping authoritative crowdsourcing proof of concept project is proposed that will connect a public high school Geographic Information Systems (GIS) class curriculum to the Texas CSEC 9-1-1 EGDMS. As a class project, students will learn how to use GIS tools to create an indoor map of their school.  The resulting digital files will be quality assured and processed into GIS map layers suitable for use in 9-1-1 PSAP mapping applications. The project will test the concept from end to end, starting with the high school class project and indoor map creation, to EGDMS data processing, to provisioning of indoor map data to a PSAP mapping application, live 9-1-1 call testing from mobile phones inside a school, and ongoing map data maintenance related to changes in buildings.  The project will additionally explore methods and techniques for increasing accuracy and precision of in-building 9-1-1 caller location computation in order to establish best practice recommendations."

The primary issues the proposed project would address are:

• New FCC rules require wireless carriers to send indoor locations of wireless 9-1-1 callers to PSAPs, however many PSAPs do not have digital indoor map data that could make such locations actionable for reducing response times.
• While some digital indoor map data may be commercially obtainable in some cases such as for some large retail spaces in urban environments and major airports, no such data exists for most buildings across rural environments. Additionally, there is no cost-effective method for maintaining indoor map data over time as buildings change.
• Building and maintaining indoor map data requires local participation and expertise, since only building owners, managers, and occupants are aware of a building’s internal structure. Specialized skills and GIS training are required to build and maintain indoor maps, and trained GIS personnel are not available in sufficient numbers across rural areas to do this work today.
• Mapping all buildings in all jurisdictions is not feasible, so this project looks to address safety in a specific building category, schools, which have critical safety and security needs.

To further develop these concepts, CVCOG worked with Mason High School Technology teacher Mrs. Diane Bode, to establish an Esri educational account. The school took the early initiative to offer high school students a GIS class for the 2019-2020 school year. CVCOG staff assisted Mason HS with GIS class outlines and resources for class lessons, as well as participated in College & Career Day (Figure 1), where our staff spoke to students about 9-1-1, GIS and Texas college opportunities in geospatial education.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) which was identified as a potential project risk to mitigate, was declared a statewide emergency in March of 2020 and continued to have negative affects throughout the project. In December of 2020, Mason ISD began virtual classes, limiting access to the school facility and the indoor project team. Due to delays caused by COVID-19, the project timeline was extended and completed in June of 2022.

The project team created indoor maps of Mason High School suitable for provisioning into 9-1-1 and emergency responder systems.

CVCOG staff utilitzed school blueprints to create an initial project map by converting blueprints from microfiche to a digital format (Figure 2), imported the floorplan data into ArcGIS Pro, and created an initial georeferenced vectorized indoor map of the school.

An assumption of the PoC was that some school buildings may not possess building blueprints or floorplan documents that could be digitized and georeferenced for integratation into 9-1-1 maps. The project team tested process to capture building scans to further develop the indoor map.

CVCOG utilized a GeoSLAM Zeb Revo RT (Figure 3) LiDAR scanner to scan the school . The device includes a laser measurement system wherein the LiDAR sensor is mounted to a motorized spinning gimbal. The scanner is handheld and as an operator walks through rooms in a building pointing the scanner at walls and other surfaces, the spinning LiDAR sensor captures thousands of point distance measurements comprising a 3D point cloud of the interior of a building. Software provided by the scanner manufacture implements a Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) algorithm. SLAM is a computational method for constructing or updating a map of an unknown environment while simultaneously keeping track of the operator’s location within the environment.

To georeference the 3D point cloud captured by the scanner, CVCOG also utilized a Trimble R1 GNSS GPS receiver. The general process for capturing a 3D scan of a building was to first use the GPS receiver outside of the building to collect control points, and then walking through the building with the handheld GeoSLAM scanner capturing 3D measurements of all rooms in the building.

The project team utilized the building scans to create GIS features in ArcGIS Pro for use in a 9-1-1 mapping application (which we would later use for call accuracy testing), and also for an online editing map application that would be used for gathering authoritative crowdsourced building information. The crowdsourced map data would be verified by CVCOG 9-1-1 staff and submitted for QA/QC validations via the Texas EGDMS platform for provisioning to 9-1-1 systems.

Mason High School played a critical role in the project, as the development of a project specific curriculum suitable for a high school technology class, and the use of class students to provide authoritative crowdsourcing were primary objectives of the PoC.

The teaching of basic GIS concepts to high school students for the purpose of crowdsourcing was a unique aspects of the project. Mrs. Bode and her students were responsible for adding the attributes to each room by editing the indoor map using an online web editor application. The school will also be responsible for any future changes in the data. Mrs. Bode, with the help of CVCOG and Geocomm, developed a project related curriculum, so that future teachers would have the resources to teach the necessary skills to their students to maintain the crowd sourced data.

An indoor map of Mason High school was created by CVCOG, updated by students, and provisioned into GeoComm's Dispatch Map application installed in the 9-1-1 PSAP. The Dispatch Map application was additionally interfaced to the RapidSOS portal to receive device-based hybrid positions. CVCOG performed 9-1-1 call testing to test and validate indoor positioning and mapping of 9-1-1 calls from mobile phones inside Mason High School. CVCOG used test phones from multiple carriers with both Android and Apple devices in order to test accuracy. Each call was documented and analyzed to study the enhanced accuracy of the RapidSOS integration, as well as testing for potential improvements (Figure 4).

The PoC determined that tasking a high school class with creating an indoor map from scratch is not feasible, and that a better approach is to start with an existing indoor map generated by COG GIS staff, or a GIS contractor, from existing floorplan documents (even if the existing floorplan documents are out of date). The PoC discovered that a small purpose-built focused web-based indoor map editing application that could run mobile browsers was easier and more intuitive for students than a fuller featured general purpose desktop GIS data editing environment. This enabled students to spend more time learning about fundamental GIS mapping principles by spending less time training in desktop GIS application specifics. This was valuable due to time constraints because GIS was only one unit of a semester long technology class that studied other non-GIS related topics as well. The PoC tested crowdsourcing indoor map updates from a high school and determined that this can be an effective and affordable method of obtaining updated information for an existing indoor map of a school.

The PoC determined that an indoor map containing crowdsourced data should to be subject to a strong quality control and quality assurance regime prior to being deployed to 9-1-1 and emergency responder applications, and furthermore than the attribution of source data is visible to public safety end-users could be useful to communicate confidence in the map data. The PoC also identified other positive impacts of crowdsourcing such as; increased accuracy of indoor map data, increased confidence by 9-1-1 call-takers, the ability to provide non-traditional information such as locally known commonplace terminology that is searchable by map users, the ability to update map data as frequently as needed. Crowdsourcing also offers a path for the creation of many maps without expending the limited resources of staff, time, and money to maintain the data. Providing basic GIS education to students for the purpose of crowdsourcing will benefit the regional and local community by creating local GIS knowledge, skills, and expertise while mentoring potential future GIS professionals. Crowdsourcing also allows the owners of critical public infrastructure to take occupant safety into their own hands by providing authoritative building information directly to 9-1-1 mapping applications.

The PoC indoor accuracy testing indicates that in the majority of cases, device-based hybrid location was on average the most accurate. There was no improvement to DBH due to building infrastructure (BLE / WiFi) changes​.

The Commission on State Emergency Communications, Kelly Merriweather (CSEC Executive Director) and all CSEC Staff; CVCOG Executive Board, John Austin Stokes (CVCOG Executive Director), Hilda Arredondo-Garibay (CVCOG Public Safety Director); Mason Independant School District, Diane Bode (Mason ISD Teacher), Merlina Gamel (Mason HS Technology Director), Angie Dudney (CTE Coordinator/Teacher), Kade Burns (MHS Principal); Ron Helterbrand (Geo-Comm, Inc), John Brosowsky (Geo-Comm, Inc VP of Innovation), and the exceptional people at GeoComm, Marc Trinks, Kelly Fox, Tom Henrich, and Dan Cragie; Sean Moran (GIS and Geospatial Engineering Department Chair, Austin Community College); Brian Rosensteel (GeoSLAM Sales Director US West), Richard Onaghise (Allterra Mapping/GIS Sales), Robbie Trcka (Allterra Mapping/GIS Sales), Richard K. Britt (FARO Technologies, Inc. Account Manager), Noreen Charlton (FARO Technologies, Inc. Field Applications Engineer | Public Safety Analytics), the Mason County Sheriff's Office and 9-1-1 telecommunicators, and the wonderfully exceptional students of Mason High School, especially Mason Hatfield, Laney Lastly, and Kamryn Loeffler. This project would not have been possible without the guidance and brilliant mind of Susan Seet (retired CSEC Director of Programs & Technology), who envisioned advancing 9-1-1 capabilities by leveraging the latest technology, while building a homegrown foundation of GIS learners as a potential future local resource in rural Texas. Thank you, Sue, for your lasting influence on 9-1-1 public safety, and for your confidence in CVCOG 9-1-1 to lead such an important project. A special "Thank you" to Mrs. Diane Bode, who started a GIS class, provided educational feedback, and authored the project GIS curriculum deliverable material. This, in addition to the many other roles and activities she is involved in at Mason High School. We recognize the mountain of responsibilities already placed on teachers across our great State of Texas and across America, and wish to highlight Mrs. Bode's dedication to Mason High School and their extraordinary student body.

For more information, contact CVCOG 9-1-1 staff at cvcog911@cvcog.org.