10/19/2026
A police map draws a street as one line.
A fire department map draws the same street as two parallel lines.
Law enforcement treats the street as a corridor for routing and perimeter control. Fire needs both sides of it. Hydrants sit on one side of the block, and an engine company has to know which side before it commits to an approach.
Both maps are correct. Each one follows its unique mission.
Now put both agencies in the same EOC, working from one common operating picture.
That picture can only draw the street one way. In most activations, the lead agency builds it, so the layers and symbols on screen reflect that agency's priorities. Every other agency at the table reads the event through that lens.
Add public health, public works, utilities, transportation, and mutual aid partners, and no single display can serve them all well.
In Common Data, Mission-Specific Pictures, the fourth essay in the Ground Truth series, James G. Featherstone argues for a different setup. Every agency pulls from the same shared data. Each one builds its own picture on top of it, tuned to its mission.
The article covers:
✅ Why the old telephone book held plenty of data and still couldn't answer the "where" questions emergency managers ask
✅ How a single COP ends up telling the lead agency's story
✅ What this model needs to work: shared data standards, a clear owner for every data layer, and leaders who back it
✅ Why the people most in need can still be the least visible in every agency's picture
Much of the technical work can be set up on the GIS and productivity tools agencies already license. The rest is a leadership call: coordinate through the data, and let each agency keep the map built for its mission.
Jim started with the Los Angeles Fire Department in 1986 and went on to lead the Los Angeles Emergency Management Department from 2007 to 2016.
🔗 Read the full article: https://bit.ly/4shoSoL
