00:01It now gives me great pleasure to give the President's Award.

00:03This is an award I get to personally make every year, and it's pretty neat.

00:08This year it's given to a very small town in Texas called Frisco.

00:12I want to show you a quick video about Frisco, and then we'll proceed.

00:26It's one of the fastest growing school districts in Texas and the nation.

00:30The Frisco Independent School District is home to more than 30,000 students attending 42 schools, including three new ones.

00:37In 2009, FISD opened an Early Childhood school, an elementary, and a new high school...

00:43...plus a sixth high school is already on the way.

00:47Given this growth, it's no surprise students' safety is a top priority.

00:52We're always looking for ways to try to keep our schools safe. In this case, FISD didn't look far.

00:58In 2008, the district teamed with the city of Frisco's information technology, police, and fire departments...

01:03...to develop a unique program called SAFER.

01:07Situational Awareness for Emergency Response integrates multiple city and school district information databases...

01:13...and gives Frisco's first responders real-time access to the most up-to-date information from a single screen.

01:21It's the most advanced tool that I'm aware of. It gives us an incredible amount of information almost instantly...

01:28...wherever we are, wherever the responder is. It also gives everyone on the scene the opportunity to have the same view.

01:38SAFER allows Frisco firefighters and police officers to begin their plan of attack even before the first units arrive.

01:44SAFER information is accessible from mobile data computers and squad cars, fire trucks, and ambulances...

01:50...from MDCs inside the fire department's mobile command unit and from the Emergency Operations Center, or EOC.

01:58If I want a unit at this particular location, I can take my finger and draw on the screen a little mark...

02:03...and it pops up on every other police officer's screen, and the ability to pop up on every fireman's screen, and see...

02:09...this is where we're putting the unit and this is where we have an officer.

02:11That's big; that's not something I ever thought I would see in my career.

02:15SAFER was a year in the making. At least a half-dozen city IT staff members, with varying areas of expertise...

02:21...worked to design the tailor-made program both city and school stakeholders envisioned.

02:26From the beginning, the major design criteria was to design in such a way that for our first responders...

02:33...they would access the same way they're accessing other information for other emergencies.

02:38The last thing you need when responding to an emergency is trying to find information that you may not have, or even worse...

02:44...incorrect information.

02:46We believe that it can save lives; we believe that it can save property. Does it live up to its name?

02:51Absolutely. It makes Frisco safer.

03:04We picked this particular one, or I would say I picked this particular one, because it's kind of like the "little city who could."

03:10This is a small city and they have a very small GIS and IT staff.

03:15They were able to blend GIS with their whole IT infrastructure and then come out with this incredible, incredible application.

03:23So I'm very pleased to introduce to you, maybe, Susan Olson and her team! Please.

03:31She's going to talk for a couple minutes and show you some of what she's done. Susan, here we are.

03:40Thank you, good luck. One last thing, this little award has been all around the world...different cities, different places...

03:49...so Susan, it gives me a great pleasure to give you this, and you really deserve it...you and your team.

03:54Thank you. It's a great honor to be here today. We really appreciate the award. It's been an incredible ride.

04:01I want to thank Jack and his team for making this possible and for seeing something special in us.

04:07As it was mentioned, we are a relatively small GIS team of six; we brought two with us here today.

04:13John Morley is our senior analyst, and Brian Mackie, he's our public safety analyst.

04:18And with a little help of technology, you can see the rest of our team back in Frisco are here with us today.

04:34They've been watching along live this morning so they can be a part of this incredible community and experience.

04:41Hi, guys. Hello?

04:45[Greetings] Hi!

04:47Good morning. Susan's GIS team is at the center of our universe here in Frisco.

04:52Thank you, Jack and Esri, for this recognition and award.

04:58I have two thoughts for you. First is that I feel that GIS has been successful at the City of Frisco...

05:05...because it's centralized and an integral part of the IT department.

05:11IT works together to support all the departments...to support all the departments...

05:21...and everyone understands that intelligent maps are a key to the city's success.

05:27And second, we approach all of our projects believing we will make a difference, and we do.

05:34SAFER is one of our many pride and joys that we built on top of ArcGIS with the help of GeoComm and our first responders.

05:43And to help make this point, we brought a special surprise along today...our assistant fire chief Paul Siebert...

05:51...who's going to share with us how the first responders are using SAFER in their vehicles today.

06:00Engine 654, automatic fire alarm. Frisco High School, 6401 Parkwood, 6401 Parkwood.

06:07Your cross streets are Chapel Creek and Stonebrook. That number is Lincoln 1448.

06:12It's 2 a.m. and we've just been dispatched to a smoke investigation at Frisco High School.

06:17We roll out of bed, we rub the sleep out of our eyes, and we climb up into those big half-million-dollar fire trucks.

06:22We've got to make sure that we're the closest unit, because we want to make sure we get a fast response to the high school.

06:27So we look around, make sure we are the closest unit, and we pull out of the station, make a right on the street.

06:33Now we want to be able to give information to our driver. We want to make sure we can get there quickly and safely.

06:39So we look and zoom closer in to the school, and we can see the major roads around the facility...

06:44...and we can see the best way to get there.

06:47Once we've got that information to our driver, now we can zoom closer in to the school; we can see the site plan.

06:53And we're looking for key information on this site plan.

06:55It's going to give us information like where the fire lanes are located, where the fire hydrants are...

07:00...and where that fire department connection is, which is how we connect to the sprinkler system to put water in there.

07:06When we want to get additional information that we've gathered previously out there...

07:09...we can go to the prefire plan information, which is connected to the site detail interface.

07:14And in that information, we're able to look and see how that building's constructed...

07:18...and what unique hazards we've noticed out there before that we want to be on the lookout for.

07:22And we're also able to see a chemical inventory list of all the hazardous materials that are inside the building...

07:28...very important to us.

07:30We also want to make sure we understand who it is we want to talk to at the school district...

07:34...and through a collaboration with the school district, we're able...they're able to update the information through a SharePoint site...

07:40...as that information changes. So if they just changed principals the day before, we get the most updated contact information.

07:48Now we want to take a closer look; we want to look at the floor plan and start to remember the last time we were out there at the school...

07:54...what those hallways looked like and what those rooms...how the rooms were laid out and what those rooms were used for.

08:00When we zoom in, we can see that the color coding underneath the rooms gives us different information...

08:04...green for the administration area and pink for the nurse's office.

08:09But now we really get to see how SAFER works.

08:13We get to see an amazing thing; we get real-time information from inside those schools.

08:16By clicking on one of 1700 different cameras, we're able to get a live video feed from inside the hallway.

08:23And so I can see, three miles before I get to the school that there's smoke inside that hallway, and I can call for additional resources.

08:32I can bring more engines and more ladder trucks and a battalion chief with me.

08:36And now we're able to get this information, put it together, and now I can focus on my job...

08:41...which is to take a hose line inside of that building and put that fire out inside of that room.

08:46We're going to call that plan A. But in our world, we always have to consider plan B and plan C...

08:51...'cause things just don't always work out the way we want them to. So we're going to worry about...

08:55...The plan B and plan C are what the battalion chief is going to worry about.

08:59Their job is going to be consider...how do we create a perimeter around this room so that the fire doesn't spread and take down the whole building.

09:06And we need to consider what kind of resources we need in order to do that.

09:09How many ladder trucks are we going to need and how much water? And water is a key one.

09:14We need to understand what kind of water supply we've got. And we can turn on the water layer...

09:18...and we can see that we've got 8-inch water lines underneath this school. We do some quick math...

09:24...and we're able to know that we can put four ladder trucks on that 8-inch water line before we run the water line dry.

09:30But we can also use other layers. We can use the storm sewers and the contours for hazardous materials incidents.

09:36We can use the parcels for evacuations. We can even use the highway mile markers so that if somebody gets into an accident on the toll way...

09:44...and they just can't see anything else except those highway mile markers...

09:47...that we can find them. This information is incredibly valuable to us, and you've seen how we've just used it on one incident today.

09:55But SAFER is really part of a bigger program.

09:58It includes our Emergency Operations Center, our police dispatch, and our mobile command center.

10:04Firefighters respond to incidents like this every day, and they call us heroes for that.

10:10But now they're armed with the information that GIS professionals just like you are providing to us.

10:17But we come home safer because of that.

10:19And in my book, that makes all of you heroes just as much as anybody that puts on one of these. Thank you very much.

10:31Thank you, sir.

10:40Ladies and gentlemen, the 2010 President's Award winner...the City of Frisco!