I work with two counties in TN with the TN NG911 standard. Flash back 10 years ago and I hadn’t really grasped how complicated address is. Do I like it? Mostly Yes. Occasionally I get questions from outside TN and I demo the two counties and how that works.
A while back someone called and went “Hey – Did you know the NENA 911 databse setup script is up in GitHub?” To which I said no so I did some investigating and I was surprised that there was a postgresql setup script. I’m 99% sure you can do “ArcServer Whatever” and leverage PostGIS/POstgreSQL.
For fun I set it up and now in QGIS I have tables:
So what does all this mean….well…..
- You can start data collection in QGIS and deliver to a Dispatch system most of the time. I say most because I’ve delivered to 3 (I think) and it’s all been shapefiles of File GDB.
- You can deliver to RapidSOS out of QGIS. They will probably say “Do it in ArcPro” and you just have to export it from QGIS into a ESRI File Geodatabase and don’t explain what you’ve done. It works. I’ve done it twice.
Based off the TN 911 work:
- Dropdown Lists. Lots and Lots of Dropdown Lists. That can be pulled from the Tables.
- Triggers for some things – but not as many as I’m running for the TN NG911 Database
- Setting up Relations in QGIS which I’ve not done for TN.
For fun I did import some of the TN data into this database several months back which led me to doing some cleanup on the NG911 TN Scripts. I need to go back and pick a small town in TN and do it from scratch.
What I think:
- Completely doable in QGIS. So you don’t need ArcPro to do it.
- You’re going to catch flack because a majority of the 911 GIS folk I’ve met have been quietly suffering and believe the Big E is the only avenue for addressing.
- You’re going to unleash the full fun of PostGIS. So you’re going to look at your data in ways you’ve not looked at it before.
Overall – it’s pretty nice to see a chance to use something that purposefully allows other than ESRI products to produce addresses. Hopefully more people take advantage of it.
