Pinpointing technology to aid cities 2 Denver firms team up on GIS hand-held devices

December 3, 2001

Imagine a digital map of Denver.

It sits in the palm of your hand and is accurate down to a foot, showing every curb, wire line and building, including which ones have tax liens, fire code violations or felons living inside them.

Technology out of two Denver businesses could make that vision a reality for cities nationwide, promising to make life easier for government and emergency workers that must share and keep records up to date.

"If we wanted to know where hazardous materials are being stored and whether that was within five blocks of the home of a felon, you would have the ability to query across different departments to get this information," said Mark Paulson, executive vice president of LinksPoint, a Norwalk, Conn., company that has teamed with Denver database firm GE SmallWorld to create the technology.

LinksPoint opened its Denver office this fall.

It has software for hand-held devices that let a person tell exactly where they are standing, using geolocation information system, or GIS, technology.

Similar to global positioning systems, GIS uses very specific reference points much like longitude and latitude to create more accurate maps.
GE SmallWorld is now a 1,000-employee division of General Electric Co. after GE acquired the company for $200 million last year.

Layers of information
It has the database technology that lets these hand-held systems produce layers of information that can be accessed and compiled by utility companies, telecom firms and municipalities.

"The systems exponentially increase efficiency," said Paulson. "Municipalities need to be more cohesive. Right now, nobody really talks to each other unless there's a compelling reason. With this, people have all the information in one place."

A city building inspector, for instance, could walk through a building with the hand-held device, review notes from previous inspections and add or change information on the go.

Utility companies could avoid using paper blueprints to find gas lines or use hand-held systems to read meters. And telecommunication firms laying fiber-optic cable could tap into the digital maps out in the field to avoid cutting gas lines.

The GIS technology proved valuable for New York City after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center.

For the past five years, New York has been building a GIS database, which today is used by more than 50 local, state and federal agencies and companies there.

"The World Trade Center attack proved to us that what we were developing was valuable," said Alan Leidner, New York director of information systems. "Over the next five years, we will see tremendous expansion of these kinds of technologies."

Easier to locate danger
Emergency workers used the database to find the location of dangerous underground fuel oil tanks. The system also helped city officials figure out part of the underground train system was damaged and what needed to be rebuilt, Leidner said.

New York City firefighters use the hand-held systems for the ongoing cleanup and recovery search, documenting the exact locations of key items found in the wreckage. They placed bar-code tags on the items and scanned them into the computer, noting the time, date and the GIS coordinate.

The information will be used and studied by a number of groups, including the Fire Department, which will try to learn how to better handle future disasters, and by architects studying how buildings fall.

Though it's a gruesome task, firefighters also documented where bodies were found in the rubble.

"This gives the families an indication of where their loved ones were and what they were doing at the time (the buildings collapsed)," said fire Lt. Brien McGuire.

Paulson said the World Trade Center attacks inspired more people to look at this technology more seriously. He expects LinksPoint and GE SmallWorld to partner on a number of projects.

"We are huddling all the time," said Paulson of the two companies.

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