Presentation

GeoComm talks School and Public Safety Solutions with Fort Bend GIS Consortium

Bryan Gillis Guest Speaker, Presentation , , , , , , , , , ,

Sugar Land City Hall – Cane Room, November 13, 2025 – The Fort Bend GIS Consortium (FBGISC) welcomed GeoComm as the featured presenter for the 2025 4th Quarter meeting. Represented by Mr. Larry Warner and supporting colleagues, GeoComm introduced members to their School Safety Mapping Solution, a modern, GIS-driven approach to improving situational awareness for public safety and school district partners.

In recent years, Texas has heightened its focus on school safety and emergency preparedness, most notably through House Bill 3 (HB 3), which strengthened requirements for safety planning, communication with first responders, and the maintenance of accurate facility information. GIS plays a central role in meeting these expectations. Up-to-date indoor maps, standardized symbology, evacuation layers, and room-level location awareness directly support the intent of HB 3 by giving emergency personnel the information they need before arriving on scene. Beyond compliance, modern GIS platforms materially improve public safety outcomes by enabling school districts, public safety agencies, and local governments to plan, train, and respond with greater precision. GeoComm’s School Safety Mapping Solution aligns with these needs by integrating building details, safety assets, and emergency protocols into a shared environment that strengthens coordination and improves protections for students, educators, and staff.

GeoComm’s solution combines a web-based map viewer and map data manager, enabling school districts and other facility owners to maintain floor plans, update points of interest, and manage safety-related assets with confidence. While major structural edits remain controlled for accuracy, the system empowers staff to make unlimited day-to-day updates-adding, moving, and renaming features as needed. Built on Esri’s ArcGIS platform, the solution leverages national standards for symbology and data structure, ensuring that maps are consistent, interoperable, and reliable for emergency response.

Feature highlights include support for multi-story facilities, a floor picker, customizable emergency protocol layers (rally points, evacuation routes, hazard areas, and more), PDF export for offline use, and robust user-management tools for handling sensitive information. Of particular interest to members was the platform’s ability to support real-time 911 call visualization, enabling dispatchers and first responders to view indoor locations down to the room level. Additional considerations-such as version control through saved PDFs, controlled data sharing with public safety partners, and secure APIs currently in development-demonstrated GeoComm’s commitment to accuracy and responsible information governance.

GeoComm also addressed several operational and future-facing elements of the solution. Although exporting lists of assets-such as AEDs or fire extinguishers-is not currently a native function, GeoComm can generate those reports upon request. Members also discussed multi-floor connectivity, evacuation routing conventions, floor plan-sharing workflows, and file format considerations during the Q&A.

As a regional consortium of over 16 public entities, FBGISC continues to serve as an established, collaborative resource for local governments evaluating geospatial technologies. While the consortium does not hold purchasing authority, our shared expertise and cross-jurisdictional experience position us to help member organizations-and, by extension, public administrators and elected officials-better understand the feasibility, value, and real-world impact of GIS solutions that safeguard our communities.

ESRI Presents ArcGIS Solutions to Fort Bend GIS Consortium

Bryan Gillis Presentation, Private Member Presentation , , , , , , , ,

Sugar Land City Hall Annex, August 14, 2025 – Mrs. Abrin Brooks and Mr. Nicholas Popovich presented as representatives of ESRI on the ArcGIS Solutions platform and the ESRI Disaster Response Program to members of the Fort Bend GIS Consortium (FBGISC). ArcGIS Solutions are a collection of free, industry-specific configurations of ArcGIS that can be deployed by an organization to improve operations and enhance services. These solutions use an organization’s authoritative data and can be used as is or customized to fit unique needs. They range in scope from a single ArcGIS Pro project to a series of integrated ArcGIS applications and are included with ArcGIS, deployable in an ArcGIS Online organization or an ArcGIS Enterprise portal.

To set the tone for this workshop, Mrs. Brooks communicated that ArcGIS Solutions is included with all members base small local government service contracts with ESRI. This clarified that the technology showcased during the workshop was for currently accessible and not a sales demonstration for members.

ArcGIS Solutions are designed as ready-to-go templates with customization features, similar to ArcGIS Instant Apps. Searchable templates from both official and user sources are available to serve as both an immediate solution and design ideas for your organizational needs. Mrs. Brooks and Ms. Anna Gonzalez provide support to our local public entities while Mr. Popovich works on development directly related to ArcGIS Solutions.

Mr. Popovich provided a live-walkthrough demonstration of the ‘GIS Request Management’ solution he developed for ESRI. This solution serves as a ticketing system, technology use, and departmental activity metrics. In addition to operational benefits, the solution adds a layer of transparency to your GIS department’s operations by documenting and archiving past, ongoing, and planned activities. It was also noted that nearly all FBGISC member organizations are actively using this solution to some degree already. Given the solutions integration-friendly design with other ticketing platforms from major vendors, this solution offers a seamless option to better service clients and track projects, serving as a ready-made framework for advanced solutions beyond the out-of-box offerings.

In addition to the official ESRI solutions, ESRI has also provided video-introductions and help-documentation for their templates and include create all ESRI templates so that they are compatible with base contracts, without additional costs attached.

In summary, Mr. Popovich highlighted the ‘GIS Request Management’ solution as a tool for submitting and tracking work requests, that additionally provides metrics and logs for internal monitoring. The solution offers levels of access, such as team / manager / program to ensure the right people have the right access, keeping the solution focused on desired intents, whether those are tracking progress, reaching department goals, or monitoring program time & effort metrics. Lastly, community data sharing with Apple Maps and TomTom improve location based access and ticket tracking. ESRI is working on expanding this location collaboration to Google Maps as well.

Following the ArcGIS Solutions workshop, Mrs. Brooks gave a brief overview of ESRI’s Disaster Response Program (DRP). The Esri Disaster Response Program (DRP) is a corporate citizenship initiative that provides GIS support to organizations worldwide during crises. The program, which has been active for over 25 years, offers 24/7 assistance, including software, data, configurable applications, and technical support. Its goal is to help organizations improve situational awareness, make better decisions, and respond more effectively to a wide range of disasters, such as earthquakes, floods, and wildfires, as well as public health crises. The DRP has provided assistance during notable events like the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Katrina.

This program was notably used by the City of Sugar Land in response to Hurricane Beryl, allowing the City’s first-responders and Office of Emergency Management to respond with a complete geospatial toolkit at the ready, without the need to purchase of additional licenses and backed up with additional support directly from ESRI.