What maps do you use?

Stephanie.

Stephanie.

Forum Captain
Messages
356
Reaction score
1
Points
16
I apologize if this is a duplicate, I attempted to search for this subject but no luck.

Was wondering what types of maps your service uses. Did they create them, order them, borrow them? Do your apparatuses have GPS?

My current service uses Mapsco 8th edition. We also have a county created box map, that separates each of the districts into quadrants. We also have what is known as the backwoods map for a lot of the more rural streets that Mapsco and Google tend to skip over.

What do you use, prefer?
 
Southern California: Thomas Brothers street guides ("Thomas Guides" now a part of Rand McNally).

Boston: Some retail GPS unit that I can't remember.

To be honest, I much more prefer the street guides to a GPS unit. What's nice about the Thomas Brothers guides is that the page numbers are continous in all of the books. So, for example, if you're going from County A to County B on a transport and page 89 is the page with the county line, the book for County A and County B will both have page 89 on it. What's nice is this allows either documentation of common locations over time or use of their software to provide page and grid numbers to crews.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
We use commercial map books and local knowledge but more and more people are using GPS.
 
Combination GPS, area knowledge, and district map book created by the county.
 
esmcdowell said:
Combination GPS, area knowledge, and district map book created by the county.
Click to expand...

Same here. I have most of our response area down by memory. I still double check everthing against the mapbook. I think it is produced by the state of WA especially for fire, law and EMS, but I am not sure. I'll check. We do have small Garmin GPS units in all of the rogs as well. I use them if I don't know the place we are going. But again, I always check them against the mapbook before we roll, if they match up, great. If not, back to the mapbook and my partner or I (whoever is not driving) navigates from it.
 
I used the "Thomas Guide" map books. Fire used their own maps created for them. Some systems use a locally created map book that is easily updated as the County creates the pages and as they approve roads, lots, and so on, they add to the book.

My issue with commercial map books is that they're typically about 2 years behind. In well-established areas, they work just fine. GPS is also good, but they're only as accurate as the base map is. Some of that data can be 10 years old. Where I live, development has ground to a halt, so most of the roads are in my 2 year old GPS unit. GPS units also have a problem "knowing" where you need to go as they require you to know the city name, or the "official" name of the area or a zip code, then the street name, and house numbers. If you have no idea what the city name is for a given zipcode, or if you don't know the zipcode, you're hosed.

Santa Clara County and Sacramento County use their own maps created for use of the Fire Departments, and they use a similar page and grid system. The software they also use for CAD can also translate to Thomas Guide grids, so that's not too difficult to deal with.

Mostly though, I used local knowledge. When I worked in Santa Clara County, all I needed to hear was the page and grid and I'd head over to the right area. I pretty much knew the major streets, so I'd only have to refer to a map for the last mile or two of an approach to the scene. Being that familiar with the streets also made it easy for me to know how to get to any of the hospitals.
 
I always hated responding to new housing additions or apartment complexes. We went to one that had no street signs up had house numbers. but they had the same house number that we were looking for on 7 or the 8 streets in the complex. took 20 min to find the patient after we got into the complex
 
We have GPS in our rigs, but they tend to be out of date and don't include the newer areas.

We also have map books which have the streets listed by name with the nearest cross street, so you can work your way back to a road you've actually heard of. I prefer our older version, which also listed what development/subdivision the street was in.

Most of the time, though, you just know where you're going. But with 100+ square miles of coverage area, there's always going to be some street you've never heard of before.

Our map book was wrong the other day, and got me lost. Luckily, it was only a fire standby for a CO alarm activation with no patients.
 
We have MAPSCOs of Dallas county (Dallas), Tarrant county (Fort Worth), Denton county (Denton) and Collin county all in our trucks.


But I use my phones GPS... Google maps FTW! Always up to date, AND can show streetview of your destination for the times you have no clue what you're supposed to be looking at.
 
Google Maps isn't always up to date. It was only a few months ago when they finally got my current residence up, despite moving in last July.
 
Stephanie. said:
I apologize if this is a duplicate, I attempted to search for this subject but no luck.

Was wondering what types of maps your service uses. Did they create them, order them, borrow them? Do your apparatuses have GPS?

My current service uses Mapsco 8th edition. We also have a county created box map, that separates each of the districts into quadrants. We also have what is known as the backwoods map for a lot of the more rural streets that Mapsco and Google tend to skip over.

What do you use, prefer?
Click to expand...

FD Grid maps are pretty easy to follow. Thomas is a good book but the most up to date maps I've found are those used by school bus yards. GPS can be a little iffy.
 
Google maps is WAY behind on some things and suprisingly Mapquest has more updated maps than google. The reason behind this is Mapquest uses Navtech for their map providers while google maps indexes several map makers to make their street maps and as a result sometimes new and even extremely old streets do not show up. I personally use a TomTom becuase of the ability to make changes to the mapping software and submit them for other users to use. Several of us at my service do this so sometimes we'll get updates from each other with new street names etc.

As far as map books we use a county made map book from our dispatch that uses text directions for every street in the county. Very annoying.
 
When our dispatch was set up, they attempted to save money by using the same mapping that the tax assesors office uses, called Pictometery. The catch is.. We can't look up addresses.. It's set up to search by account number. :-/ they are trying to convert it. But for now it's '911 what's the adress of your emergency and your tax account number??..... Oh by the way your property taxes are due in 3 weeks." :-P
 
My county uses Toughbooks with built in mapping software that automatically routes to the dispatched address. Dispatch is hybrid too. The radios beep, a computerized voice gives the basic info, and the detailed info pops up on the computer screen. Real humans are available immediately by radio if necessary.
 
Stephanie. said:
When our dispatch was set up, they attempted to save money by using the same mapping that the tax assesors office uses, called Pictometery. The catch is.. We can't look up addresses.. It's set up to search by account number. :-/ they are trying to convert it. But for now it's '911 what's the adress of your emergency and your tax account number??..... Oh by the way your property taxes are due in 3 weeks." :-P
Click to expand...

That doesn't sound like anywhere near the best system :P I can just see all sorts of problems creeping up
 
BC Ambulance uses in computer maps. I believe they are shared between us and the FD but I couldn't be sure. I wouldn't know who made them though. They are your basic road maps with grids on them and pop-up points of interest (Gas, food, hospitals, FDs, PDs, our other Stations etc).

It's a pretty good system.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top