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July 14, 2022

We're moving back down south to Georgia and South Carolina for a fire stations challenge! This challenge mostly contains points which need to be peer reviewed or advanced edited, however there are also several points with no edit history. Remember to also check for missing stations! 

Contents 

 

Base Map  

As you can see from the map below, a decent amount of work has already been completed for these states. However there are lots of green points we’d like to get peer reviewed or advanced edited, and if we overlay the points with no edit history (see below), there’s still a good amount of work yet to be done! 

TNMCorps Mapping Challenge: Fire Stations in Georgia and South Carolina (07/13/2022)
TNMCorps Mapping Challenge: Fire Stations in Georgia and South Carolina (07/13/2022)

 

Points with No Edit History

This challenge includes points with no edit history. These are points that were edited prior to the launch of our current application. You can identify points with no edit history by highlighting the point and then clicking on the “View History” button in the edit panel. A message saying “This feature has not been edited” will appear in the lower righthand corner. See the Yellow Points with no Edit History?? article in our July 2021 newsletter and the Edited Points without an Edit History article in our March 2018 newsletter for more information on these types of points. 

TNMCorps Mapping Challenge: Fire Stations with No Edit History in Georgia and South Carolina (07/13/2022)
TNMCorps Mapping Challenge: Fire Stations with No Edit History in Georgia and South Carolina (07/13/2022)

 

Not sure what each point color means?   

Each point in the editor has a colored border. These colors are part of our tiered editing process and signal to other editors that a point has passed through the upper tiers and does not need to be edited again. Our November 2018 newsletter has an article titled Editor Roles and Point Colors that describes this process further. 

TNMCorps Point Border Colors
TNMCorps Point Border Colors

 

Tips and Tricks for this challenge:

A fire station is a building that houses fire response equipment and to which fire personnel report before being dispatched into the community.  Note that this does not include structures used solely for administrative, training, and/or storage purposes.  If you encounter a point representing any of these features that we are not collecting, please document your findings in the ‘Comment’ field and delete the point. 

Possible Sources 

  1. Remember to find an authoritative source (e.g., the fire department’s website or Facebook page) for each feature before updating it. 
  2. Fire departments operated by government agencies are often listed on the agency’s website under ‘Departments.’  
  3. Smaller and/or volunteer departments may also use Facebook or other social media platforms to create their own website. See page 6 of our July 2017 newsletter for an infographic on when to use Facebook as an authoritative source, and this January 2022 newsletter article on when to use FireDepartment.net as an authoritative source
  4. Exercise caution when using information from secondary, aggregate sources not created or directly maintained by the fire department. Information on these sources is often outdated or inaccurate.   
  5. If you must rely on secondary sources, cross-reference it with multiple sources before updating points.  

Example Resources

Here are some examples of authoritative fire station resources for each state from Facebook, a county website, and a municipal website: 

Georgia 

South Carolina 

Naming Convention 

  1. When naming fire stations, use the name that the station identifies with. This can be found on the station’s website or roadside signage.

    • If a station references multiple variations of a name on their website and/or signage, use the variant most frequently referenced. 

    • Another best practice is to use the name as it is presented with their address on the station’s “Contact Us” page.   

  2. Some fire departments use station numbers while others do not. 

See our Name and Address Formatting Guide for additional tips on naming.  

Proper Point Placement 

  1. Our January 2018 newsletter includes an article on aerial interpretation for fire stations, which walks you through the process of using aerial imagery to find the correct building on which to place a point. 

 

Questions?

If you have any questions about the editing process, reach out to us at nationalmapcorps@usgs.gov. Thanks for helping us out, and happy mapping! 

 

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