New York State Office of Cyber Security
Geographic Information Systems Clearinghouse
GIS Partnership Summary
West Carthage Volunteer Fire Department
2007
GIS Partnership Award Winner
Partnership Purpose and Goal:
To provide GIS services to a small community volunteer fire department to map
fire hydrant locations as a color-coded document to be carried in every village
emergency vehicle as well as distributed to neighboring fire districts. The
goal of this project was to provide immediate, accurate information to drivers
of emergency response vehicles as to the size and location of fire hydrants
within the village proper.
Participants and Resource Contributions:
Village of West Carthage: Village of West Carthage Volunteer Fire Department
required maps of hydrant locations.
Carthage Central High School: provided equipment, software and people to collect data and create the maps.
Equipment was a Thales Mobile Mapper Pro mapping grade GPS with post-processing differential correction, ESRI software ArcMap.
Date Partnership Began: 9/2005
Completed: 8/2006
Deliverables:
Street maps were created using the NYS GIS Clearinghouse ALIS road layers for
Jefferson County, NY. One major map was produced showing the location
of fire hydrants, color coded to indicate barrel diameter of the hydrant. This
map was reproduced, laminated and placed in every fire department vehicle.
Brief Summary of Partnership:
Scott Pierce was a student in the Intro to GIS course offered at Carthage Central
High School. One of the requisites of the course is to apply GIS as
a problem solving tool. Scott was also a member of the West Carthage
Volunteer Fire Department . He envisioned the connection between the
mapping ability of the GIS software and the potential for decreasing access
time to hydrants for volunteer firefighters.
Scott approached the instructor for the GIS class and the senior members of the volunteer firefighters to determine the need for such a map. Both entities agreed that this service could result in less access time to fire hydrants during a call, which translates into less property loss and potentially saving lives.
The Village gave the students permission to document the hydrants along with a list of attributes to record, such as installation date, barrel size, paint color and manufacturer. The hydrant was assigned as located at an intersection or along the street. A Thales Mobile Mapper Pro GPS was used to collect hydrant points and attributions. Post-processed locations were then imported to ESRI ArcMap desktop GIS solution for placement along with the ALIS road layer.
Final maps were adjusted for size and colors and then printed and laminated and placed in each fire department vehicle in the village as well as distribution to the Town of Wilna Fire District.
This cooperative project between the school, village and fire department also received second place in the New York Conference of Mayors Local Government Achievement Awards program in May, 2007.
National League of Cities:
http://www.nlc.org/articles/articleitems/ncw72307/nycomawardwinners.aspx
Additional Information Available On-line: None
Contact Information: primary contact
Name: Scott M. Burto
Title:Mayor, Fire Dept. representative
Organization: Village of West Carthage
Address: 61 High Street, West Carthage, NY 13619
Phone: 315-771-6353
Fax: 315-493-2847
E-mail: vwcmayor@westelcom.com
Contact Information: secondary contact
Name: Peter Walsemann
Title: Instructor
Organization: Carthage Central School District
Address: 36500 Route 26, Carthage, NY 13619
Phone: 315-493-5030
E-mail: pwalsemann@carthagecsd.org