Atlantic is dedicated to helping our clients achieve their geospatial goals… or in this case, needs. “Fighting Crime with GIS and Lidar,” an article published in the December 2014 issue of xyHt, details a partnership that quite literally saved lives.

Weakley County, Tennessee’s 911 department was asked to assist in creating GIS-based intelligence packages to be used as a critical tool in a raid designed to apprehend over 40 suspects. With a limited budget, and using only their existing Lidar dataset, Atlantic customized a solution that was by necessity, low on manual effort and high in accuracy. The resultant building footprints have the detail, sharpness, and appearance of photogrammetrically derived feature class that was manually drawn.

As Will Trimble, Weakley Counties GIS Specialist, said, “There’s a lot of data out there, which is great. But for small jurisdictions and communities, they are not necessarily able to pay for Lidar products of this nature, nor do they have the technical solutions in mind. So, collaborating and sharing data resources is so important. The average GIS user can do these types of things in their counties and jurisdictions with the right partners. This type of thing really can be done anywhere.”

We couldn’t agree with him more, and we would love to help you achieve your geospatial goals too – or are they needs?