A fire company is responding to a rural home. Its firefighters have an address, but the structure sits well off the road, out of sight.
Fortunately, they can tap into Lancaster County's Geographic Information System, which provides a color aerial photograph of the building and its surroundings.
Also, 911 dispatchers can call up the image to direct ambulance, police and fire crews.
GIS also can provide the exact locations of rivers, streams and ponds. Fire crews often tap into farm ponds when fighting big blazes.
Municipalities need to know where impervious surfaces are as they try to control stormwater runoff, and the boundaries of floodplains to determine where homes should not be allowed.
Because of the obvious value of GIS information, Lancaster County commissioners on Wednesday agreed to pay $61,209 to update the county's features as documented from the air.
The project will be handled by Michael Baker Jr. Inc. of Harrisburg.
The GIS Planimetric Data Editing Project will map and show a photo of every building in the county more than 400 square feet, as well as every stream, river, lake and pond.
Information on waterways has not been updated since 1998, and the last plotting of buildings in the county was done in 2005.
