New TeleAtlas Map Data for Emergency Responders

Tele Atlas announced the availability of Tele Atlas places2protect, a premium product providing highly accurate location-based and property information on emergency medical services and critical access facilities and institutions, including hospitals, schools, daycare centers and government offices. Leveraging Tele Atlas places2protect, federal, state and local governments and commercial enterprises such as insurance and utility companies can integrate accurate location information into their mission-critical, map-based applications. Hummm, what’s that saying? If it’s good enough for the emergency responders to use…. This technology appears to solve that issue of map makers estimating where the house is on a street by interpolating to some extent; this dataset knows where things are.

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Tele Atlas places2protect provides relevant information for government officials, emergency planners and private companies developing emergency management applications or managing utility or pipeline assets. The product helps provide instant location and feature data for planning and preparedness and delivers up-to-date institution and location information. With Tele Atlas places2protect, detailed location information is accurately positioned on the map using Tele Atlas’ proprietary Address Points database, which is designed to pinpoint street addresses to a specific physical building, site or parcel.

The availability of Tele Atlasplaces2protect further strengthens Tele Atlas’ leadership position in the emergency services sector. Today, over 90 percent of E911 calls in the United States are routed with Tele Atlas data, systems which handle over 200 million calls for assistance annually*; 41 of the 50 states manage their critical infrastructure services using Tele Atlas data; and the vast majority of public safety agencies use commercial data relying on Tele Atlas.

Tele Atlas places2protect is available for partner application developers and device manufacturers in a range of public sector and enterprise markets. The launch of the product follows an announcement earlier this year regarding an agreement to incorporate MCH GeoPoints’ institutional data within Tele Atlas’ digital maps and points of interest (POI) products. Tele Atlas places2protect key features include:
§ Complete and accurate location data for 21 different types of institutions in all 50 states;
§ Extensive attribution needed to identify places at risk; and
§ Information based on proven data collection methods and updating and quality assurance standards and practices.

“Whether guiding emergency response teams or driving economic planning, accurate location-based information is at the heart of public safety applications,” said John Cassidy, vice president, government and GIS markets, Tele Atlas. “We are committed to delivering highly accurate digital maps to our enterprise and public service partners, and continually adding information that helps them develop vital navigation solutions.”

The Pennsylvania Geospatial Technologies Office (GTO) is one state office currently leveraging Tele Atlas digital maps to help ensure public safety. In 2006, the GTO made a strategic decision to purchase MCH GeoPoint’s places2protect Homeland Security datasets to support homeland security, public safety and mutual aid in Pennsylvania. Combined with the Commonwealth's Tele Atlas ONE digital map enterprise license, government agencies and first responders are able to display statewide base maps that include critically important location data.

"The GTO provides this important resource to all Commonwealth government and first responder agencies for their daily use and for emergency response purposes to help create a statewide Common Operating View (COV),” said Jim Knudson, deputy CIO, GTO. “Our public safety business requirements called for these features and many of them didn't exist in state agencies or we didn't have statewide coverage. By utilizing Tele Atlas map data and the location-based information for critical access facilities, the COV filled an important public safety and emergency response data need for the Commonwealth."

June 19, 2007

New TeleAtlas Map Data for Emergency Responders