A recent, state-funded initiative to improve North Carolina’s 9-1-1 mapping system will soon be giving both county officials and the general public an eagle’s eye view of the entire state.

Surry and Yadkin emergency services departments received their new maps last week and are already benefitting from the high-resolution aerial images.

“Having the most accurate information as far as mapping allows us to know exactly where an address is when we’re responding to a call,” said Surry County Emergency Services Director John Shelton.

For Shelton, whose department provides 9-1-1 emergency transportation and paramedic services to the more than 70,000 residents within Surry County’s 538 square mile area, the up-to-date and highly detailed images will be used to locate and chart routes to residents’ homes and cut emergency response times.

“Everything we do in public safety relates to having an accurate address,” said Shelton. “Today, our operations – police, fire, EMS – absolutely can’t perform their tasks without good, accurate information.”

Having the best mapping information available saves lives and property, according to Shelton.

He cited last month’s wildfires in the Lowgap region of northwestern Surry County as a time at which his department heavily relied on digital mapping technology. Emergency teams used high-resolution images to identify isolated and hard-to-reach structures that might be threatened by the fire.

Shelton also said that the new maps will aid emergency service teams throughout the region in coordinating search and rescue missions, planning evacuation routes and organizing disaster relief tactics.

Improving safety at a regional level is the primary purpose of the new maps, said North Carolina Center for Geographic Information and Analysis Director Tim Johnson.

“What has happened in the past is that county leaders have had to provide funding for these images by themselves,” said Johnson. “That caused spotty coverage, which led to inconsistent data about what was actually on the ground in each county. This solves that problem.”

Johnson’s CGIA staffs the state’s Geographic Information Coordinating Council – a policy body formed by the N.C. General Assembly to promote and develop geographic information systems.

The CGIA, said Johnson, works in collaboration with the N.C. Department of Emergency Management, the Secretary of State’s office and the DOT, among several other state government departments, to compile geographic information systems, or GIS, data across the state.

Receiving an annual departmental stipend of approximately $740,000 from the General Assembly, the CGIA creates initiatives to collect the most updated and consistent mapping information for all of North Carolina’s counties.

As of May 2011, the new mapping data for the state’s 100 counties will be available to the general public for the first time in the same location. That location, the CGIA-sponsored website NCOneMap.com, will house a massive database (18 terabytes, estimated Johnson) of full-color, high-resolution maps for the entire state.

According to Johnson, the maps will be higher quality than images provided on Google Maps and will also be a significant improvement to the 9-1-1 maps that counties have until now paid for on their own.

Funding for the statewide map project was provided by a $12.3 million N.C. 9-1-1 Board grant awarded to the City of Durham last year. Durham applied for the grant on behalf of all of the counties in the state.

The grant money was later distributed to regional blocks of counties, and the maps will be amassed through NC OneMap to form a bank of uniform, statewide GIS data.

Surry, Yadkin, Forsyth, Davie and Davidson counties received their new maps last week. Wilkes and Alleghany counties are among the group that will receive its maps later this month.

Taking the aerial photos and updating the 9-1-1 mapping system on the state level is, “the most cost-effective way to do this,” said Johnson. “If you do this as a state, you capture new and consistent information for everyone.”

Surry County Tax Administrator Michael Hartgrove estimates that that grant-funded, statewide initiative saved the county between $75,000 and $80,000 in renewing its GIS mapping data, which it last updated in 2008.

“We could not have done this had it not been for NC OneMap,” said Hartgrove. “It would have been very difficult to get funding for the project otherwise.”

Hartgrove said that Surry County’s tax office, as well as its emergency services, also stands to gain from the new mapping system.

“These maps are very valuable tools for us,” said Hartgrove.

Tax administration officials use current maps to identify taxable property structures.

Having the most recent GIS data is also essential in determining accurate property tax revaluation rates, or the fair market value of all real property within the county, said Hartgrove.

He said that the county’s planning and development office could also benefit from the new information by being able to clearly see new houses, roads, schools, land parcels and other important structures and areas.

Still, however, Hartgrove said that the mapping project’s top priority is the safety of North Carolina residents.

“There’s been a big effort from the state in recent years to have our emergency services among the best in the country,” said Hartgrove. “This is an ambitious project, especially when you have a lot of terrain issues to deal with as we do in Surry County.”

As for the CGIA’s role in creating the new maps, Johnson said that he hopes his organization’s standardization of and improvements to the 9-1-1 map system will bring positive, long-lasting change to the way officials chart terrain in a growing state.

“North Carolina is a changing state. Some areas are growing very rapidly and having that current picture could make all the difference in saving lives or property,” said Johnson. “One of our goals was to have better information than what was available to the counties before. I hope we’ve accomplished that.”