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How can I contact SDR?
E-mail addresses are found on the Contact
page of this website.
Phone the business office at 785-842-0447 or fax at 785-842-0558.
Finally, you can send mail to 14 E. 8th St, Lawrence, KS 66044.
SDR's business hours are 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. Central Time, Monday through Friday.
If you're familiar with downtown Lawrence, our offices are one block east
on Massachusetts on the north side of 8th St.
Where is Lawrence?
Lawrence is located about 40 miles due west of Kansas City and 30 miles east of Topeka, along Interstate 70. Interstate 70 is a toll road here, so visiting SDR will cost you some spare change. For those of you equipped with handheld GPS location systems, the coordinates of our office are:
X -95.23527500 W Longitude
Y 38.96948056 N Latitude
How long has SDR been in business?
SDR was founded in August, 1993 and has been operating out of Lawrence, Kansas since 2001.
Who are SDR's customers?
SDR provides GIS and E9-1-1 consulting and software services to clients in state, county and municipal governments, utilities, and in the private sector. While our clients are concentrated in the Midwest and Southwest, we work all over the country.
What is Spatial Data?
Opinions differ:
"Spatial data is any piece of information that is referenced to a location.
A table can link the population of a city to its real world coordinate location."
"Spatial data is data that pertains to the space occupied by objects. It is any data that is related to a position on the earth's surface."
"Spatial data is information which is linked to a specific location, for example the population of a town, or the occupant of an address. In many cases the difficult part of setting up data for a GIS is linking information to a location; a process known as geocoding. Within a particular data set there must, of course, exist an element which specifies its location. Ideally this would be a map co- ordinate, but it could also be a postcode or street address. The element within the data that identifies the location is known as its geocode."
"Spatial data is geographic data that stores the geometric location of particular features, along with attribute information describing what these features represent. The locational data is stored in a vector or raster data structure, and corresponding attribute data is stored in a set of tables related geographically to the features they describe. This is also known as a georelational data structure. Spatial data is organized thematically into different layers, or themes. There is one theme for each set of geographic features or phenomena for which information will be recorded."
What is E9-1-1:
The "E" in E9-1-1 stands for "Enhanced." What makes a Basic 9-1-1 system different from an Enhanced 9-1-1 system is the type of database information that is transmitted to the emergency dispatcher when someone dials 9-1-1. In Basic 9-1-1, the dispatcher routinely sees only the phone number of the caller. With E9-1-1, the dispatcher received full identity and location information including name of telephone subscriber, physical address, telephone number, community, and most importantly, a code identifying the appropriate emergency responders to send to that particular address. By adding location information to 9-1-1, valuable minutes and seconds are saved in response time, saving lives and property.
What are some other benefits of addressing?
Emergency responders are not the only ones who will find homes more easily with addressing. Addressing helps the post office and other delivery services such as UPS and FedEX. Others who benefit from be locating places more efficiently include utilities and retailers such as florists and pizza deliverers. Addressed counties will eventually be included in on-line mapping services such as MapQuest. Finally, addresses assigned for 9-1-1 are not likely to change while rural route addresses can change frequently in growing counties as population increases cause mail delivery routes to be added and split.
How is E9-1-1 paid for?
E9-1-1 is funded differently in different counties, states or regions. In many places, residents pay for the services through special surcharges on their phone bills or through sales taxes. Some states support E9-1-1 through special grants or loans.
What is an MSAG?
MSAG stands for "Master Street Addressing Guide." The MSAG is the heart of an Enhanced 9-1-1 (E9-1-1) system. It contains addressing, community and emergency response information for every road in the area it covers (often an entire county). If you call 9-1-1, your address and phone number are matched against the MSAG to extract the code for the specific law enforcement agency, fire district and ambulance service that serves your particular address.
What is ANI/ALI?
ANI, the service provided to Basic 9-1-1 subscribers, stands for Automated Number Information. ALI, which is provided along with ANI to Enhanced 9-1-1 subscribers, stands for Automated Location Information. The 9-1-1 or ALI database is administered by the telephone companies and along with the MSAG is the backbone of the E9-1-1 system.
How can GIS fit into an E9-1-1 system?
E9-1-1 is a perfect venue for implementing a GIS. In essence, an E9-1-1 system is based on the relationship of points (homes), lines (roads) and polygons (boundaries). The MSAG describes each road in the service area, split into separate segments and defined by address range, for every emergency response zone (polygon). GIS opens many options to 9-1-1 centers including Dispatch Mapping, AVL, Vehicle Routing, Wireless Call Mapping, Automated Emergency Management, Automated Addressing and Map Maintenance and much more.
What software titles are currently offered by SDR?
AddressIt, MSAG Toolkit, Go2It and CollectIt.
Are all of these available for ArcGIS?
AddressIt and CollectIt are available for ArcGIS desktop. CollectIt is available for ArcPad. AddressIt can be easily customized by SDR for use in you server-based GIS. Go2It is a MapObjects-based stand-alone product for dispatch mapping and light CAD duties. Go2It uses ArcView shape files but ArcView is not needed to run Go2It. Go2It is also available for use on WinMobile devices running ArcPad.
Is AddressIt just for addressing?
No. Addressit is a powerful tool for maintaining spatially-accurate road centerlines customized for use in dispatch and vehicles for emergency location. AddressIt also features MSAG creation and coding utilities, reporting tools, coordinate search and landmark cataloging. Our extended AddressIt tools feature integration with Assessment databases.
What is differential GPS?
Check on this page for several links to sites that explain GPS at many different levels.
How does SDR use GPS?
SDR uses real-time differential GPS linked to laptop or handheld computers to collect positional data for the features we map. As many of our clients are implementing E9-1-1 systems, we typically map structure, landmark and road centerline locations. The GPS provides a real-time "bread-crumb" trail, which each point (or "crumb") in the trail representing the field vehicle's position at one or two-second intervals. Our GIS layers are built upon these bread-crumb trails with ortho imagery used as a control. "Gwen" is also rumored to use handheld GPS units on airplanes and is keeping a spreadsheet of speeds at touch-down.
What is more reliable-GPS points or the USGS ortho imagery?
An ortho image is a photograph of a portion of the surface of the earth. While a photograph is flat (two dimensional), the earth is not. Thus, the photo has to be "warped" or "corrected" to fit the actual shape of the earth.
GPS points represent precise coordinate locations. A point, having only one dimension, does not have to be "warped" to fit the shape of the earth. GPS points collected with differential GPS are more accurate than ortho imagery.
Does my cell phone have a GPS chip? How does it work?
If your cell phone is relatively new-produced after 2003-it probably has a GPS chip. This GPS chip works like a GPS receiver-it needs a "view" of the horizon to get a GPS "lock" from satellites. If you're in your basement (or inside any building) the phone has a hard time seeing the horizon. Most cell phones record and broadcast their positions only if you dial "9-1-1" unless you manually adjust your settings.