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by Tom Condon
Facility information is
crucial to managing emergencies
effectively and
minimizing damage to the
facility. An understanding
of the layout of the facility
can mean the difference
between life and death.
For example, occupants need to understand
the facility’s layout to find their
way to emergency exits. And emergency
responders need to understand the facility
layout so they can navigate easily
and direct fire suppression efforts more
effectively. Mapping technology offers
new opportunities for providing facility
information to occupants and first
responders.
Traditionally, the layout of the facility
has been communicated through printed
facility maps. These have been posted
on signs in hallways to show emergency
exit routes, and are usually also stored
in a book at the building’s security desk
or in the management office. Slightly
different versions of this information are
provided in paper formats to local fire
departments so they can create ‘battle
plans’ for fighting fires.
While this method has been used for
decades, it is one of many aspects of
facility emergency management that
has been undergoing scrutiny after 9/11
and hurricane Katrina. Those events
illustrated that many aspects of traditional
emergency management are
sorely lacking, and facility mapping is
definitely one of them.
Printed facility maps have some inherent
flaws that make them less than ideal
for modern emergency management.
The first is that it is difficult to effectively
change the plans and ensure that
all parties are using the same version. For
example, when interior spaces are altered,
those changes need to be added to hallway
emergency exit signs, the lobby
book needs to be updated, and the local
fire departments need updated copies.
But what if facility maps are not
scrupulously maintained by all parties?
In a fire at a large manufacturing
facility, firefighters found themselves
trapped in a dead-end because they were
using outdated facility maps. When the
fire shifted suddenly, they followed the
facility map to what they thought was a
safe area. In fact, the area had been converted
to a storage room for flammable
chemicals. Fortunately they were able
to escape by chopping a hole through
a wall with an axe. A simple lack of
communication had almost cost the
firefighters their lives.
Another critical flaw of traditional
printed facility maps is that they are
difficult to distribute. Because they are
paper, they must be copied or faxed in
order to distribute them (which only
aggravates the problem of maintaining
a single version). For example, when
police were called to a facility because an
employee was seen with a gun, they discovered
that the building did not have a
book of facility maps on-site. The police
had to call the fire department and have
them fax copies of the floor plans so they
could find a way to navigate behind the
gunman and surprise him.
The third major flaw is the sheer bulk
of paper facility maps. It is simply not
feasible for emergency responders to
carry copies around with them to ensure
they always have the information they
need. This has led to situations where
firefighters arrive at a facility and find
that there is no map book, or the map
book has been destroyed, leaving them
with no clear picture of the facility.
These are some of the reasons that
facilities owners and municipalities are
turning to information technology to
modernize facility mapping. One of the
leading cities in this movement is Chicago,
which passed a watershed emergency
evacuation ordinance in 2001. The ordinance
requires tall buildings to prepare
emergency evacuation plans and submit
them, along with floor plans, to the city
in a digital format.
The city then uses these digital plans
in new ways that paper could never be
used. After being checked for conformity
to city standards, the digital plans
are archived in the city’s OEMC (Office
of Emergency Management and Communications).
From there, the digital
plans are accessible to city staff that need
this information, including managers
at OEMC who coordinate emergency
efforts that sometimes involve large or
multiple buildings. Since the plans are
digital, they can also be easily distributed
to other city offices if needed.
Rather than sending a messenger with a
set of paper plans, they can be emailed in
a few seconds.
Because the facility floor plans are
digital, computer technology offers
incredible new capabilities. For example,
OEMC has incorporated floor plans
from some of the largest buildings into a
3-dimensional model of the city’s downtown.
Projected on a wall-size video
screen, OEMC managers can fly through
this ‘virtual city’, and zoom in and out
at will, similar to the way Google Earth
displays its 3D buildings. But this system
is far more advanced, and allows you
to see inside the buildings as well. By
clicking on a building, you can choose
a floor and instantly see the digital plan
for that floor.
This kind of capability is valuable
during events that involve very large
or multiple buildings because it helps
managers visualize a very complex
environment. 3D visualizations allow
someone to instantly grasp the spatial
relationships between floors in a building
or between multiple buildings. It
is much more difficult to visualize a 3D
building from 2D plans, especially in the
stressful environment of an emergency.
The digital floor plans make it possible
for first responders to have huge
amounts of information available during
an event. For example, when a fire truck
is dispatched to a fire, the crew can access
digital plans for the building on a laptop
computer in the truck. While on the
way to the fire, they become acquainted
with the layout of the facility and can
see additional information like where
hazardous materials are stored. This
ready availability of information is transforming
the way emergency responders
manage events. They are more informed,
and are better equipped to deal with the
environment.
Cities are not the only ones benefiting
from digital facility maps. Real
estate developers are also finding that
managing facility information in digital
formats has significant advantages
over paper. Many real estate owners and
managers are choosing to use online,
web-based portals that store their floor
plans and related facility information.
By storing floor plans online, all parties
are able to access a single, accurate
version of the plans. This is particularly
important in real estate, where many
different organizations and stakeholders
can be involved. Brokers, building managers,
architects, space planners, tenants,
and building engineers all have a need
for this information, and they can all
access it from the same source in the
web-based portal.
Digital formats also allow the building
owner to decide who sees which parts of
the building information. The broker
may see the floor plan in the context of
a simple line drawing suitable for marketing,
while the engineer sees all the
details of all the drawing layers, including
HVAC and other systems. This is
possible by using the layer functionality
of digital plans. Different layers of
information can be turned on or off to
show or hide parts of the drawing as
the building manager sees fit. That way
people only see the information that is
useful to them.
Another advantage of using digital
facility plans is that paper usage
and floor plan reproduction costs are
dramatically reduced by storing plans
online. Instead of making copies of floor
plans for all the different groups, they
can access the information online, saving
reams of paper and the significant
costs of floor plan duplication.
In online portals, digital facility floor
plans can be used as the basis for a wealth
of information. For example, software
can be used to automatically generate
stacking plans or calculate square footage.
This has proven to be a windfall for
some real estate owners who were basing
rents on inaccurate square footage
measurements. In a recent sale of one
large building in Chicago, for example,
calculations on digital floor plans found
that the building was 8% larger than
previously thought. This increased the
building’s value by millions, and resulted
in more rental income and a higher
selling price.
The availability of facility information
from a location outside the building can
also be a key benefit. In one example,
a fire in a commercial office building
destroyed all the paper plans that
existed for the facility. Accurate plans
were needed to get a permit to start
repairs, and doing as-builts and drawing
up new plans would have added
weeks to the schedule. However, the
facility manager had scanned the plans
into digital formats and uploaded them
to an online portal. The plans were
emailed to the architect, who was able
to get a permit and begin work on
schedule. Organizations can improve
their business continuity plan by using
web-based systems that can continue to
function even when the facility cannot.
These capabilities are all valuable,
but there are some challenges to going
completely digital. Some facilities do
not have digital plans, and are discouraged
by the cost of having digital plans
created. This ordinarily requires on-site
field verification and measuring as well
as scanning paper blueprints and redrawing
them in digital formats. Much
of the cost of digitizing the plans could
be returned by the discovery of new
square footage as mentioned before.
There are security implications to
storing and distributing this facility
information, and the city of Chicago
takes this very seriously. Floor plans,
details of HVAC systems, and emergency
evacuation plans could be very useful
to malicious individuals planning an
attack. Therefore, all information is
guarded by a system of firewalls, encryption,
and intrusion detection software.
Files are transmitted in encrypted formats
within the city’s private network,
and can be securely transmitted across
the Internet using the latest encryption
techniques.
Just as they have changed so many
other aspects of our lives, computers are
changing facility mapping, emergency
evacuation, and disaster recovery. We’re
just at the beginning of this major shift,
and we can expect to see more changes
in the next few years. We can expect
web-based digital facility information
to become the norm, helping us to
deal with emergencies and recover from
them faster.
About the Author
Tom Condon is a Senior Consultant
for System Development Integration (www.sdienterprises.com), a nationwide technology
consulting firm involved with web-based
facility portals and digital mapping.
He can be reached at (312) 580-7531,
or via email: tcondon@sdienterprises.com.
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