Madison County/Huntsville E911 Center Demonstrates How Data Sharing Can Work In Municipalities

Touring the Huntsville/Madison County E911 Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is testament to how sharing data at the local level can work when the stakeholders want it to work. Carl Pearsall, Madison County/Huntsville E911 GIS Director, has every byte of geospatial data available for the country at his fingertips. He has to. Its a matter of life or death, and the local agencies with whom he works understand that. At the E911 Center he’s responsible for a repository of geospatial data that includes contributions from the city of Huntsville, Madison County, Huntsville Utilities, plus an Automatic Number Identification/Automatic Location Identification (ANI/ALI) system to support call-taking and dispatching of emergency vehicles. He has data that is stored in an Intergraph Dispatching system which is supported by CAD data in Bentley MicroStation design files and which he exports to an ESRI ArcView system for analysis and modeling. He’s using multiple systems and multiple data types in multiple formats…and he makes it work…especially for taxpayers. It is an impressive facility which he believes may be the most comprehensive in the world. At least his ability to get cooperation from the major stakeholders is every bit as impressive as the facility that supports it (photo at right). The E911 center is built underground as a bunker-style building protected from the elements of tornado ally. Staffed by a group of dedicated professionals, the facility has the ability to communicate with state police, the Red Cross, and other first responders.