Abstract

Geographic Coordinates and Incident Safety
Track: Emergency Medical Services/Fire
Authors: emmor nile

The primary concern for Incident Management Teams (IMT) is that of firefighter safety. In the 1990's the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) adopted a standard for the US National Grid (USNG). The push behind this effort was to standardize the map based coordinates used on an incident to enable communication about locations. This standard is not widely known, and even less often implemented. The use of civilian GPS receivers has grown exponentially in the last ten years. Today, there is not enough time or money to train firefighters and volunteers in the use of USNG, new firefighters are able to effectively read maps and GPS receivers and communicate their location to other individuals. For these and other reasons the geographic location standard for the wildfire community is to follow the aviation community and use latitude and longitude.