In the ongoing quest to shave valuable seconds off emergency response times, Palm Beach County has made a notable leap forward. The County’s Engineering and Public Works Department’s Land Development Division has collaborated with Information Systems Services (ISS) and Planning, Zoning, and Building (PZB) to map out future roads onto their Geographic Information System (GIS) before they even break ground. This critical upgrade to their system can mean the difference between life and death in construction site incidents where traditional maps fall short, as stated on Palm Beach County’s website.
Waiting for roads to be physically built before they are added to maps can cost valuable minutes in emergency response times. In a practical move, the Land Development Division, alongside PZB and ISS, are now using pre-documentation to bypass this wait. according to a local government announcement, a document is now sent to ISS ahead of development, prematurely mapping roads and addresses.
This preemptive move provides a tangible improvement in the responsiveness of emergency services. When an incident occurs on a site where construction has barely begun, first responders can locate and reach the emergency using the advanced mapped data. With construction sites often being a labyrinth of unfinished roads and unpredictability, the traditional lag in mapping could lead to longer arrival times when help is most needed…