Presentation Abstract and Biography
	MECCMap, A Fire Department GIS Mapping Application
	Jason Miller, Plain Township Fire Department
	Jason is a 16 year veteran of the fire service and has been with the Plain Township Fire Department in New Albany for the past 6 years. He also works for the Metropolitan Emergency Communications Consortium (MECC), a regional dispatching agency serving 6 fire departments on the east side of Columbus. He is responsible for GIS/mapping and has developed MECCMap, an in-vehicle GIS mapping application specifically tailored for use in the fire service. Jason resides with his wife Kim and 2 children in Holmes County, Ohio.
	Thursday, September 17, 2009 - 11:30 AM - Track 3
	In 2005, Plain Township Fire Department and multiple surrounding departments formed the Metropolitan Emergency Communications Consortium (MECC), an effort to regionalize and consolidate fire department dispatching and resource sharing. MECCMap was created from this initiative using Visual Basic and ESRI’s ArcReader technology which relied on GIS data available from the Franklin County Auditor, City of Columbus, and other municipalities and agencies. The ArcReader model was used because of the ability to install it on an unlimited number of computers without having to pay additional license fees and distributed to all of the MECC agencies. MECCMap was refined to accommodate data from different counties without having to merge or consolidate GIS data, allowing each county to utilize data in its original form. Further development allowed the sharing of crucial pre-plan data, enabling agencies to obtain information about neighboring jurisdiction’s properties in the event of a large emergency.