Auburn Hills, Michigan (Peter Auger, city manager), is a 31-year-old, growing community with an unusual tax base breakdown of 80 percent commercial and 20 percent residential. It is home to more than 30 international headquarters from 40 countries, as well as five commuter colleges and universities and 21,000 residents. It has a reputation for having interconnected and nimble city services that respond quickly to the diverse and evolving needs of its corporate, cultural, and educational climate.

Still, despite a collaborative approach between city departments, the assessor’s office and the emergency services department (police and fire) were not in regular contact until a fire response issue requiring their respective skills brought the two departments together. Mayor Kevin McDaniel explains why the project was created:

“At any fire scene, it is critical for firefighters to make quick connections to water sources to save lives. That’s why improving response times is a critical goal for any emergency services provider. In analyzing our systems and procedures, we recognized the need for updated city maps to improve response times. Our existing maps were old and did not reflect all of the new developments in the city over the past several years.”

Auburn Hills Deputy Assessor Karen Blinkilde took the lead to collect and connect the dots and organize them into new, 11x17-inch city map books. While popular buzzwords are electronic and web-based, Mayor McDaniel noted that the most practical maps for use by fire personnel are actually laminated paper:

““As a former public safety officer, I know that these maps are usually reviewed in intense, time-sensitive situations on moving fire trucks. There’s little time to engage a computer. From a practical standpoint, the large-scale, laminated maps make it much easier for responding firefighters to zoom in on individual buildings and strategize at the same time.”

Blinkilde, who has been with Auburn Hills since 2005 and worked in the Oakland County Equalization Division prior to that, is experienced with maps and map-making software and also knows the intricacies of parcel maps, which may include such buildings as strip malls. She explains:

“With the help of interns from the department of public works and emergency services, we were able to use GIS (geographic information services) to identify each of the city’s fire hydrants, fire department water connections (FDC), and corporate Knox Boxes, which contain keys for the firefighters to gain access to a building in an emergency situation. We also included building outlines that we obtained from the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments as an added identifier. It was extremely detailed and often tedious work, but keeping the end goal of saving lives in mind, we persisted.”

In addition to being oversized, the laminate maps can be written on with dry-erase pens, making them a valuable tool at an incident command post as well as in the day-to-day work of firefighters, EMTs, and other emergency personnel.

There’s still a complementary place for technology with the new maps. Electronic versions are in the fire truck computers and at the communications center so that dispatchers—who previously used Google maps—can further assist responding personnel in locating an address on the map, as well as advise them on exact fire hydrant, FDC, and Knox Box locations. While the mapping project originally targeted fire response times, once police saw the maps, they had them uploaded into their mobile computers.

This example shows how department personnel need to talk to each other, regardless of their focus. In this case, departmental collaboration translated into enhanced safety measures.