Local GIS Tidbits
Brentwood, TN is facing a challenge many municipalities are: cell phones replacing landlines. The challenge for public safety staff is how to contact those without landlines when a neighborhood situation (utility outage, crime, lost child, etc) pops up. Brentwood is asking residents to register their cell phone numbers, along with their addresses, to insure they are called via the reverse 911 system on those devices.
The one comment to the article is concerned about that sort of registration meaning the city knows where you are all the time.
David Mark, GIS Manager at the City of Vancouver is not about to step on the toes of hackers who built a garbage day calendar and reminder message service. An app built during a “hacker event” has 150 subscribers and many using a calendar feed. For now, says Mark, “By and large we do our share by making the data available,” and won’t link his site to the app or build one like it.
Johnston, IA has new sign markers on its trails equipped with numbers that represent a GPS coordinate. The idea is that in case of an emergency, a caller could give the numbers to 911 operators. Eagle Scout candidate Lucas Dunshee put up the markers.
