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November 20 2002 Board Meeting A regular scheduled meeting of the Public Safety Communications Center Policy Board was held on Wednesday, November 20, 2002, in Room 501 of the County Administration Building, 320 Chestnut Street, Wilmington, North Carolina. MEMBERS PRESENT: MEMBERS PRESENT: Chairman Frank Blackley Dan Summers, Excused Andy Atkinson Bill Whisnant Steve Smith Brian Roberts Lt. Ed Pigford Dennis Cooper Everett Ward Bill Clontz Robert Matheson Lt. Lise Ruefle Frankie Pridgen, Representing New Hanover County Fire Services GUESTS: Don Cahoon, Motorola Chris Hoker, Motorola Robert Llora, Motorola Clyde Eller, Dictaphone Mike Arkinson, New Hanover County GIS Department Chairman Blackley called the meeting to order at 9:07 a.m. Chairman Blackley introduced Robert Matheson. Mr. Matheson will replace Ed Woodard as the EMS representative on the Committee. The summary of the October 24, 2002 meeting was reviewed and approved. Andy Atkinson made a motion to approve the minutes as written and Ed Pigford seconded the motion. The motion passed. OLD BUSINESS: City of Wilmington GIS Position: Chairman Blackley reported on the City of Wilmington GIS position and template update.  The City of Wilmington has been interviewing various applicants for the position.  Chairman Blackley stated that a decision on the applicants was uncertain at this time. Template Update:  Chairman Blackley stated he and Dan Summers discussed the radio template issue. 2  Agencies need to send Dan Summers their inventory sheets.  The City of Wilmington is working in conjunction with Ron Groves, Coastal Electronics, on their radio template information. NEW BUSINESS: Public Safety Communications Center Report: Steve Smith reported on the Public Safety Communications Center’s October Report. Personnel:  The Center currently has one full-time position and one part-time position vacant.  Approval for the full-time position has been granted. An applicant from the applicant pool has been interviewed for that position.  The Center has three new employees they are as following: Jeremy “Mac” Hampson, Jennifer Salter, and Debra Knowles. University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNC-W):  The phone system at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington will be changing.  The new system will allow students and faculty to dial directly into the Public Safety Communications Center for assistance.  Currently, the number that is being used is 4911.  The new system will provide provide the university with Anni Alli information.  The call volume generated on that channel should be minimal.  The Center already has a transfer line connection to the university. Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s):  Steve Smith is waiting to receive the Standard Operating Procedures from Ed Woodard, EMS.  Steve Smith has spoken with the Sheriff’s Department about dispatching protocols. Town of Carolina Beach Dispatch:  Effective January 1, 2003, the Center will begin dispatching the Town of Carolina Beach traffic.  The repeater unit for the Town of Carolina Beach has not arrived.  When the repeater unit arrives, it will be tested. The testing should only take a few hours to complete.  Don Cahoon will check on the status of the repeater unit.  The map for the Town of Carolina Beach has been reviewed and completed.  Currently, the zones and business listings are being reviewed.  Dan Summers is working with the staff on the radio situation. The radios need to be installed before January 1, 2003.  Steve Smith has spoken with Chief Dunford, Carolina Beach Police Department, regarding the dispatching issue. Chief Dunford would like the Center to informally start dispatching traffic on December 13, 2002. 3  The County recently hired Debra Knowles on a temporary part-time basis, which will allow her to train on the CAD system. She has been dispatching radio traffic for the Town of Carolina Beach for several years. Ms. Knowles will continue to work in her current position for the Town of Carolina Beach until the transition on January 1, 2003. Beginning in January she will move into a full-time position with the County. Radio and Telephone Upgrade:  Representatives from Motorola and Dictaphone are present and will answer questions regarding the new equipment that the Center will be purchasing. Clyde Eller, a representative with Dictaphone, will give a brief demonstration on the Dictaphone recording capabilities. Don Cahoon, Chris Hoker, and Robert Llora, Motorola representatives, will also assist with the presentation.  The Motorola and Dictaphone contracts have been approved by the Board of County Commissioners and have been signed by the County Manager.  Installation will be on going.  The telephone and and Dictaphone installations are more involved than the radio installation and will require more time to install.  The location of the Center will determine when the installations will occur. Marketplace Annex/Renovations:  Before any physical renovations can begin, the location of the Center will need to be resolved. Planning and funding decisions will be affected by the Center’s location.  Several options are being addressed before renovations of the Center can begin.  One option is to stay in the current location in the Law Enforcement Center. Another option would be to relocate to the Marketplace Annex.  County staff is exploring all possibilities to spend the funding as effectively and efficiently as possible.  Effective January 1, 2003, new building codes will go into effect for Emergency Operating Centers and 911 Centers.  A change order was approved by the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners to allow the engineer and architect firm currently working on the 911 project to evaluate the Marketplace Annex building to see if the building meets the new code requirements.  The two main code concerns are wind and sizematic requirements. Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) System Upgrade:  Most of the problems associated with the CAD system have diminished since the completion of the CAD upgrade on the sequel server.  The New Hanover County Information Technology staff is working to add additional memory to the servers that handle the message switches. The problems associated with the mobile data terminals (MDT’s) are also being addressed. 4 Survey:  A telecommunicator survey has been created to address which areas of the Center need improving and which areas emphasize the Center’s strong points. A copy is included in the handout.  A report on the compiled results will be presented to the Committee at the January meeting. Information Technology (IT) Sub-Committee: Bill Clontz distributed the IT Sub-Committee report for November and reported briefly on the GIS Point-Addressing Project.  The Towns of Wrightsville Beach and Carolina Beach will have representation at the monthly IT Sub-Committee meetings.  The point-addressing incentives are going very well.  Mike Arkinson will give the Committee an update on the point-addressing project.  Currently, work on the improvement incentives has slowed down due to the installation of the new CAD upgrade on the sequel server.  The addressing exception aspect is going good. Please refer to the handout for a more detailed explanation.  A copy of the address exception database is included in the handout.  The GIS reports that have been resolved have been reviewed by the Public Safety Communications Center to make sure the information is flowing correctly into the CAD system. Point-Addressing Project: Mike Arkinson reported on the Point-Addressing Project.  McKim and Creed Surveyors have been awarded the contract to execute the point-addressing project for New Hanover County.  The contract with McKim and Creed is for six months and all work should be completed in that time frame.  A pilot area around Greenfield Lake and Sunset Park will be the first area that data information will be collected.  The area has a good mixture of residential, commercial and business complexes.  The aerial photos for that area have also been received.  Data collection has been going well.  Approximately 900 points a day are being collected.  A database has been established to store the collected data.  The information will be sorted according to different units (single multi-story building, residence, business, mobile home park or an apartment complex).  Individual addresses of each unit in a mobile home park are being collected along with the primary address of the mobile home park.  Any unclear street names or house numbers are being left blank or zeros are being inserted. 5  Staff at a later date will research the blank or zero areas and insert the correct information.  The field data is being collected on a daily basis and as it is reviewed it is being inserted into a consolidated GIS layer.  Modifications to the codes and database designs are being done to simplify the task of making decisions and recording the information for the surveyors doing the fieldwork.  While the surveyors are out in the field, especially in high crime areas, the City of Wilmington Police Department in conjunction with the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Department will increase patrol to ensure the surveyors safety. Animal Control has also been notified. The surveyors have been given contact numbers of the various agencies if they need assistance.  The surveyors will capture the XY coordinates at the front door of each building.  Information regarding HAZmat materials can be linked later to the address points if the City of Wilmington and New Hanover County elect to do so. This would be a separate project to enhance the data currently being captured.  New Hanover County GIS employees are spot-checking the information to verify that it is being collected correctly.  Several items are being recorded and verified on the addresses. The following information is being included: house numbers (includes half numbers/sub numbers); a drop down menu box is being used to record street names to avoid any typing errors or mistakes; an unknown field is also available for use if an address is not on a known road. Special codes are available to identify whether the address is residential, business, complex, duplex or individual, a mobile home park, unit, or unit type (suite). There is also a section for the date, collector’s initials and coordinates.  The work collected will not be inserted into OSSI until the project is completed. The information will be switched with the existing file.  New construction address assignments will be the second phase of the project.  The City of Wilmington and New Hanover County GIS departments will be responsible for recording new construction addresses and maintaining the database.  The County has been broken down into zones to identify the areas that have been completed and the areas that need to be done.  Receipt of the new color aerial photographs will determine which zones will be scheduled next for data collection.  The new color aerial photograph project should be completed in January 2003 and should be inserted into the CAD system by summer 2003.  The next area that data will be collected will be the west side of Carolina Beach Road and Carolina and Kure Beaches.  The main objective of the point specific address location is to identify the location of the call immediately by use of an overlay.  The CAD system overlay will respond to the call by drawing an arrow on the front door of the building.  The color aerial overlay will have specific locations for every address entered into the system. 6  The images are sharp and very accurate.  A File Transfer Protocol (FTP) download site has been created to store the information collected.  Information on the FTP download site will have the capabilities of being copied and pasted into a local directory on a daily basis.  When we receive the downloaded file it will be quality controlled (QC’ed) to meet our methods and then moved to a consolidated file.  As the files are delivered each delivery will be QC’ed and stored in a larger collection until an entire area is complete.  New GPS equipment has been bought that allows access to the front door of a building while standing across the street or on a curb.  The equipment uses lasers to record the information and is more accurate than the older models.  The surveyors have been using the new equipment to collect the data.  As the maintenance and pace of the mapping project becomes more manageable, the GPS unit may be used for collecting item locations.  Building footprint updates are also being compiled from the color aerial photographs.  A building footprint layer was originally created in 1994.  A footprint of a building is based on its roof top outline. The roof top outline is then digitized for that specific building.  The surveyors are capturing buildings that are approximately 5,000 square foot in size, which would be a footprint for a medium size building.  Buildings smaller than 5,000 square foot will be captured with a circular symbol.  Information pertaining to an address that has several buildings located at that address location would also be available.  Topographic information is also being captured.  An additional terrain model was built using the aerial photography.  By using the terrain model, an engineering scale certified for four-foot contour lines could be developed. This instrument could be used for engineering work that has any use for four-foot intervals.  The same terrain model will be interpolated and compressed down to two-foot so that two-foot contour line can also be developed.  The contour lines will be used for planning and engineering purposes. They should be available in January 2003.  Through the aid of a software product called ARCSDE, the storage of geographic information (GIS) will be compiled differently then in the past. ARCSDE will allow several users the ability to access the Microsoft SQL server and allow them to edit the same file simultaneously.  This new product will eliminate the file management updating issues that required duplicate copies of files.  In the past, if two people opened the same file at the same time and were not aware of it they could corrupt the file.  With ARCSDE multiple people may be in the same file at the same time.  ARCSDE will create a single address file that both agencies can maintain simultaneously. 7  It will make the whole process of keeping files up-to-date more efficient.  Chairman Blackley asked Mike Arkinson to give a presentation on the overview of the addressing project at the January meeting. Dictaphone Presentation: Clyde Eller, Dictaphone representative, gave a brief presentation on the new Dictaphone equipment that the Center will be purchasing. The following items were discussed:  Disengage Mary Antley from having to reproduce tapes of radio and telephone traffic for the various agencies.  Train agency representatives to create their own tapes using Internet capabilities.  Assign and train someone in the District Attorney’s Office to create tapes.  Select individuals to be trained and set up a training meeting.  No calls can be erased.  One DVD will hold 1,200 channel hours of recording.  Six months of recording will be stored on one device.  North Carolina law states 30 days for storage of information.  Keep information for 10 working days then delete.  Assign Mary Antley as the administrator.  Have a static ID address for each of the four recorders.  There will be two workstations and six data copy address stations.  Talk with department heads to find out what information they want on the recorder.  Update and clean out the current files.  Recording the smart net traffic will require additional channels and telephone lines.  Currently, there are 14 frequencies and approximately 400 talk groups in those frequencies. The next scheduled meeting will be held on Thursday, January 23, 2003, at 9:00 a.m. in Room 501 of the County Administration Building, 320 Chestnut Street, Wilmington, North Carolina. Andy Atkinson made a motion to adjourn the meeting, Ed Pigford seconded the motion. There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 11:20 a.m. NOTE: The January 23, 2003 regularly scheduled meeting was cancelled and the next scheduled meeting will held on Thursday, March 6. 2003 at 9:00 a.m. in Room 501 of the County Administration Building, 320 Chestnut Street, Wilmington, North Carolina.