| Automated Building Layouts
November 20, 2007
By Bob Galvin
Tactical Response
Today, the software technology is available to produce rich detail of any building interior whether it is a school, warehouse, business, bank or residence. Floor plans are available before SWAT’s arrival, so tactical officers can plan a better-informed and more precise response.
In Canby, OR—a city near Portland—the police department is using an innovative software program to develop floor plans for all of the area’s buildings. Canby Fire Department Captain Val Codino, in addition to his fire department duties, also serves on the Canby Police Department’s Tactical Entry Team. For the past two decades, Codino has been drawing pre-fire plans, and for just over two years, he’s used a software program called First Look Pro, offered by The CAD Zone.
The First Look Pro software allows fire department personnel to locate the pre-fire plan information for any site and see a preview of the associated diagrams. A diagram reveals the floor plan of a building and its key details like type of roof, nearest hydrants, entrances / exits, stand pipe location, presence of HazMat, among other details. The program eliminates the need to pore through thick binders of pre-plans during a fire call, saving precious time and speeding up response strategy. Today, Canby’s patrol officers and Tactical Entry Team members access the fire department’s pre-incident plans and tailor them for their own use.
First Look Pro is an adjunct software program to another CAD Zone software program, The Fire Zone, which enables fire personnel to draw building layouts fast by using a library containing hundreds of pre-drawn building templates and fire industry symbols. Fire Zone also can import photographs from digital cameras, and convert 2-D pre-fire diagrams into 3-D views. Once the preplans are created, firefighters and police can then enter an address on their MDTs and the pre-plan containing floor plan and a text description of the structure’s interior instantly appears, along with any photos.
These preplans reside in every fire department throughout the country. So, why aren’t more police and fire agencies sharing their pre-incident plans? Codino thinks it’s simply because that police departments do not realize the plans exist or how helpful they can be for SWAT and tactical operations.
Initially, pre-incident software was used among Canby’s patrol officers for responding to calls where suspects were believed to be hiding inside specific buildings. CPD’s Sergeant Kitzmiller saw how helpful the software could be for showing floor plans of these buildings, he soon arranged for his tactical entry team to use it, too. The software is particularly useful for search warrants that the team serves.
Pre-plans exist for most buildings in the city’s core downtown area, but not for all buildings or even houses that are occasionally the target for a search warrant. In these instances, team members can create an appropriate layout based on structure. Informants also can be used to enter structures tagged for a search warrant, after which they provide a description of the interior to police so a basic floor plan can be created.
Once a layout is diagrammed, using CAD Zone’s Fire Zone software, it is entered in the First Look Pro (FLP) program. The FLP software then gives full screen viewing of floor plan diagrams and other images. Details such as street names, multi-levels, downstairs / upstairs, and entrances / exits are indicated, which help the tactical entry team members devise a plan for how they will approach the structure during a search warrant. This strategic plan will identify primary and secondary entries and precisely how tactical operators will clear the building’s interior.
Since Canby Fire Department has pre-fire plans for all of the community’s main buildings entered into First Look Pro, it is easy to burn them onto a CD for the police department to view and customize as needed. The pre-incident planning software takes a lot of guesswork out of SWAT callouts because information and layouts on nearly any building can be organized and documented in a file for quick reference on mobile data terminals inside patrol cars.
Kitzmiller recalls one callout involving a phone call from a subject who was suicidal and holding a gun while standing in a garage detached from his house within a mobile home park. The subject’s mother and sister were in the house, and had called the Canby Police Department about their relative in the garage. En route to the scene, the tactical entry team pulled up a floor plan using the pre-incident software. The floor plan gave enough detail to allow the team to set up containment, evacuate neighboring trailers, and to discreetly escort the subject’s family out of their house. Once the scene was barricaded, the tactical entry team was able to calm the subject without incident.
Kitzmiller said the pre-incident software is significant for refreshing officers’ memories about a building floor plan just before they arrive on scene of an incident in progress. The software program is especially valuable for providing layouts of sprawling warehouses that might be accessed by only two responding police officers.
Other similar drawing programs exist. One is the Rapid Responder® crisis management system from Prepared Response. This is a Web-based crisis management system to allow emergency responders to respond to any emergency incident. For example, in 2003, the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs (WASPC), along with Prepared Response, used Rapid Responder to map every high school in Washington state, and is now cataloguing all public K-12 schools and other state critical infrastructure with the software as well.
The software enables emergency personnel to view at least 300 points of site-specific critical information en route to an emergency, access building safety plans, and geospatial information through a secure Internet connection and can also be used without an Internet connection.
Besides the pre-incident planning software programs, other types of safety planning technology also might be worth considering. Virtual reality (VR) software can be highly effective for creating scenarios that involve floor plans or local city streets as part of high-risk management situation planning.
With VR, data is entered by a programmer into a computer, after which three-dimensional images are generated to create virtual environments. Under one type of VR system, the user views the 3-D images using a head-mounted device. Different views of the environment are then displayed, giving the user a sense of depth.
A second VR system uses a position tracker, which monitors the user’s physical positions and feeds this data into a computer. This data then tells the computer to alter the environment based on the user’s actions. By using a joy stick or track ball, the user can move through the virtual environment. Thus, with this advantage, he can employ virtual weapons to confront virtual aggressors.
VR could prove invaluable for SWAT team members before high-risk tactical assaults. Floor plans and other known facts about a structure or area could be entered into a computer to create a virtual environment for commanders and team members to analyze prior to action.
In 2005, American School Safety (AMSS) and Interactive Tactical Group offered a combined emergency management and virtual tour system to school districts nationwide to strengthen response by police and educators to school emergencies and violence. This system enables school officials to virtually tour a building before an emergency occurs. When a violent incident erupts, officials can use the system, called Virtual Floor Plan (VFP), to deploy maps and visual images, which give information about the building and its occupants. Bill Smith, president of AMSS, claims that the VFP system will improve response by emergency personnel.
Canby Police Department’s Kitzmiller sums it up, “We owe it to the tactical team members to give them as much information about a target as possible so they can make the best decisions in the safest manner possible.”
Bob Galvin is freelance writer based in Portland, OR. He writes on trends and technologies related to crime / accident scene investigation and public safety pre-incident planning. He can be reached at rsgpr@msn.com.
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