December 2006
| Project Highlights: |
| Hi-Res Oblique Photos of All North American Municipalities |
Now Available Directly within the Horizon EME CAD and Mobile Data |
Fully Integrated with all EME Incident and Mapping Functions |
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
Aerial images that deliver detailed photographic views of incident scenes in a 3D-like format to fire fighters, police and EMS personnel are nearly invaluable. With the integration of Pictometry®, Symposium now offers clients the option to instantly view accurate, zoom-able, high-resolution photos of every municipal address within their jurisdiction, directly from the Horizon EME™ CAD and EM Mobile™ mobile data system.
Pictometry differs from traditional aerial and satellite images in that it provides up to twenty oblique (from an angle) views for every address, from multiple directions. This makes it easy to quickly and accurately grasp the lay of the land, and to plan a response with the very best visual intelligence available.
Pictometry and and Symposium – Making Your Response Safer, Faster, and More Effective
The result is an invaluable tool for both planning and response, providing public safety agencies with better strategic intelligence on how to tackle major incidents, and enabling improved tactical in-the-field decision-making by allowing dispatchers and responding personnel to see the exact terrain they have to deal with, before they even arrive on scene.
The Symposium-Pictometry® integration is seamless and transparent, enabling dispatchers using the Horizon EME CAD and responding personnel utilizing the in-vehicle EM Mobile mobile data system to switch back and forth between the traditional map view and the Pictometry® view by simply clicking one button. Once in Pictometry® mode, users can choose what direction they want to view the address from, and what zoom level is appropriate for the detail they want to use – it’s that simple.
Client response to this new feature has been tremendous, straight across the board. Peabody Fire in Massachusetts was one of the first to go live with the new integration, with Symposium-enabled access to Pictometry® in both the dispatch command center and in the vehicles. According to Peabody firefighter and project coordinator Russ Lewis, the new capability has made a major and immediate difference: “With this new feature, our command and control capabilities are light years ahead – We’re able to actually see what we’ll be dealing with on an incident level, with instant access to detailed imagery when and where it’s needed. On their own, each system is great, but together the combination of CAD, mobile data and Pictometry® has put us far ahead of the curve in terms of preparation and effectiveness”.
This sentiment is echoed by Symposium Technologies, which places the Pictometry® project in the context of the company’s ongoing emphasis on integration as a crucial tool in making our systems better and more useful to clients. As a company representative put it, there’s often a big disconnect between the focus of many companies and the needs of clients: “Sometimes companies get so caught up in focusing on just their own product, that they don’t pay enough attention to the bigger issue – how their product can best be used to help address the broader needs and goals of their clients.”
And, for Symposium, that’s where the emphasis on integration comes in: “We take a more client-centered approach, starting with the question of what the customer needs to accomplish. We then either build in or integrate the very best technologies available to deliver the strongest and most complete solution for each client’s needs. Whether it be Pictometry®, the FIREHOUSE® RMS, GPS, mobile data, alarm monitoring, video/CCTV, or other technologies, the result is the most comprehensive, targeted and practical use of the available tools to achieve the goal – faster, safer response to real-world situations and emergencies.”
Going forward Symposium plans to incorporate even more Pictometry® features into its CAD and mobile data, such as the system’s unique and powerful measuring capability. This will enable users to obtain vital measurements from the Pictometry® image such as distance, height, elevation, and area directly on the oblique imagery, thereby helping them better plan how best to set up and tackle the situation beforehand.
For more information, or for those interested in seeing the system in action, please contact Symposium by emailing us at info@symposiumtechnologies.com.
