Managing Regional GIS Data

For 14 years, I had the privilege of developing and managing a regional, enterprise GIS system for the City of Yuma, AZ. Our system served nearly every department in the City, from public works and utilities to parks and community development, but one of our most critical responsibilities was supporting public safety systems regionally. This began as supporting E9-1-1 GIS data County-wide and Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) GIS data for an even broader region that extended beyond our county, into neighboring tribal lands across state lines into California.

In practice, this was everything but easy.

We received data from seven different addressing authorities: The County, two military installations, two tribal communities, two other incorporated municipalities, and an adjacent county in California. Every single one of these agencies used a different schema for their GIS data. Some agencies sent us just the changes, while others sent complete, updated datasets every time. To make matters worse, we were often provided the same unnormalized data over and over again, with little communication about what had changed, making it extremely challenging to keep everything updated and aligned.

Our process involved modifying all incoming data to meet the latest version of the NENA GIS data model (version 1 at the time), resolving anomalies flagged by our client-based validation system and sharing the updated, integrated data back with the agencies for review. While necessary, this workflow was painful, time-consuming, and flawed. Miscommunication, duplication of effort, and the constant need to re-verify the same records over and over again led to frustration for both my division and the agencies supplying the data.

The Problem with the Old Approach

The real issue wasn’t just the different data models or the tedious manual edits—it was the lack of a common operating picture. Every agency was operating in silos, and we lacked a shared, real-time view of the authoritative data that would allow each agency to make changes only to the data they were responsible for. In other words, we needed a shared collaborative validation and editing system with the ability for each agency to view and interact with the regional dataset, but only edit within their jurisdiction.

This idea wasn’t just a fleeting thought. It came up repeatedly in conversations with our State representatives, at State GIS Council meetings, and within various working groups. At that time, I was heavily involved in the Arizona State GIS Council, even serving two consecutive terms as president/chair of the council. Despite my efforts to push for a regional solution, the resources, technology, vision and or acceptance simply weren’t there.

A Pioneering Role in NG9-1-1

My team’s work with public safety data led to us being chosen as a participant in Arizona's NG9-1-1 pilot project. Our agency was proactive and already NENA version 1 compliant even before the standard was released to the public. In fact, we were fully operational a couple of months before version 1 of the NENA GIS data model was officially made public.

At the end of the pilot, I had the opportunity to give a debrief presentation at the Arizona Geographic Information Council’s Education and Training Symposium. My main topic? Lessons learned and the ongoing need for a common operating picture, a single validation and editing solution that could be deployed regionally to minimize the data integration challenges we were facing.

At the time, we were using a state-supplied, client-based validation solution that worked well if we were operating in isolation. But the reality was, we weren’t. We were working with multiple agencies, and there was no mechanism for sharing and collaborating on the anomalies flagged by the validation solution. The lack of communication between agencies and the absence of a shared tool to track and resolve issues in real-time made this process exhausting and inefficient.

A Glimpse of a Potential Solution

In the final year of the NG9-1-1 data development, I had the chance to work, on a non-production basis, with a novel solution that was being developed to address the integration side of this very problem. The idea behind the product was a SaaS solution that provided a common operating picture, allowing all participants to see and work with a small number of very basic validation rules and the ability to publish changes up through a hierarchy or basically to be integrated with other agencies at the State level. Unfortunately, while the concept was solid, the solution was built to support editing only through an ArcGIS desktop add-in, which made it unsuitable for many rural agencies lacking the necessary client-based GIS tools and the expertise to utilize them.

Despite its limitations, the idea behind the solution was revolutionary. It addressed many of the pain points I had encountered throughout my career. It eliminated the need to develop and maintain complex Extract, Transform, Load. (ETL) models, it would have cut down on the endless email chains trying to communicate data changes, and, perhaps most importantly, it provided a means for each agency to see and vet the integrated data in real-time. The issue of being supplied incorrect data repeatedly could have been avoided.

Moving Forward

Some states have started to recognize these challenges and are taking steps toward adopting solutions that provide a common operating picture. However, many others still face a disconnect between the 9-1-1 community, which controls potential funding sources, and the GIS community, which is responsible for developing and maintaining the data.

Looking back on my time with the City of Yuma, I can’t help but think about how far we’ve come as a GIS community, but also how far we still have to go. The technology is there, the vision is clear, but the willingness to collaborate and break down silos is what’s truly needed.

My Call to Action

We need more advocates in the 9-1-1 and GIS space to push for solutions that foster real-time collaboration, reduce duplication of effort, and allow for seamless integration of data across multiple jurisdictions. It’s not just about technology—it’s about communication, cooperation, and a shared vision for the future of public safety data management. I hope that as more states recognize the need for a common operating picture, we’ll see these solutions gain widespread adoption and finally put an end to the outdated processes that have plagued us for far too long.

#GIVE #GIS #NG911 #PublicSafety #DataIntegration #Collaboration