The basis of this project was to develop a Geographical Information Systems Template in which Emergency Dispatch personnel could work from in order to assign resources in the event of an emergency. The GIS interface would contain information in which visual and attribute reference could be accessed within the Greater Vancouver Regional District. This database is based upon the erudition that appropriate response would involve the following: the location of health care facility catchment areas; physicians offices; population districts (Dissemination Areas); neighborhood locations, such as church's, schools, post offices, etc.; and streets and street names. These maps would facilitate regional dispatchers receiving an emergency call requesting paramedic assistance or for use in preventive services, which could be used to designate available resources during 'high risk' times to nearby residences that fall within a 'high risk' parameter - such as Dissemination Areas with large populations of disabled senior citizens during black-out's or winter snow storms.

The capability of a GIS to serve emergency dispatch personnel in this type of an environment is a relatively new merger of science and technology. Although dispatchers have utilized wall maps and personal knowledge to respond to incidents in the past, the ability of a GIS to provide real-time dynamic mapping brings a new approach to the ways in which resources are allocated.

With a GIS, dispatch personnel are able to pan, zoom, and identify the physical world through a computer interface. Icons and information can be made to 'turn on' or 'turn off' at certain scales in order to provide more or less detail depending on the users need. This not only allows the user to query through multiple situations, such as observing different types of population characteristics (high concentrations of certain age groups, disabled groups, etc.) but also affords them the luxury to create and print custom maps to make real-time evaluations based upon real-time data. Because emergency responders are on command twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week this capability is extremely beneficial.

The following model was incorporated to fulfill the project objective

In the event of an emergency an emergency response dispatcher would have before them a GIS template containing basic geographical information about the area of concern. Used here was an overview of the Greater Vancouver Regional District. Basic information would contain the Health Care Facility Catchment Areas and other mouse-over events that would provide names of each Health Care Facility (click here for a sample image). After the user located the catchment of interest he/she would be able to select the requested area and zoom to a larger extent that would contain only the area specified. At this stage the operator would be able to decipher other specific details tied to the catchment area, such as its size or bounding coordinates; the number of available Health Care Facilities (hospitals, physicians offices); or the number or people within its jurisdiction. This information would be tied to a GIS database so that users could click on specific points of interest to obtain attribute information pertaining to their query (click here for a sample image). In the event that it was necessary to dispatch resources, the operator could zoom to a much larger scale to obtain information containing street address, 'high risk' areas, navigation grids, and locations of other particular points of interest. The functionality to query the interface as in stage 2 would remain possible as at this scale users would need to access the most information (click here for a sample image).

In addition, these maps could also be categorized into an on-line/paper map atlas. Paramedics, health care managers, dispatch personnel and others could have field access to a bound copy of the GVRD catchment zones. The development of an emergency response health atlas has been underway and can be viewed by following the link at the bottom of this page. It should be noted that these maps must go through a series of trials and meet certain standards in order to be considered a valuable resource. To view further information leading to the development of a health atlas click here.