Fire District Maps

This is a collection of offline maps for a variety of mapping apps. While I usually prefer large files that cover our entire response area, these are broken down to just covering each fire district. There are three main basemaps per district, satellite imagery, standard USGS topo map, and a shaded terrain topo map. These will work in OsmAnd (IOS and Android), Avenza, and AlpineQuest.

For each district, there is a KMZ data file, which can imported on top of the basemap to display information that you can search, or enable/disable the display of that type of data. This should work in almost any mapping app on any platform. The data I'm using is incomplete in some areas as it comes from OpenStreetMap, improving that is a long-term project. I have a lot of the raw data,but it's a slow process to convert it, clean it up, validate it, and import it upstream.

For the parcel maps, click on a parcel to display the owner and address. This data is often incomplete as it comes from the upstream data source I get from the county. If I can ever get better contact info for each parcel, I'll add it, but that seems hard to find in public sources. Maybe that's good...

For the KMZ data files, when viewed in Google products, you need to import the icons, which are included in the KMZ file. I use my own set of icons as the default set doesn't contain suitable emergency response icons. The icons my maps use come from OsmAnd.

The PDF maps are generated for multiple zoom levels, hence the number in the name of the zoom level supported. Unlike other mappng apps, Avenza doesn't like large files, and prefers to do it's own zooming anyway. Depending on your device, you'll have to pick the one that works best for you.

For those interested in making their own maps, here's some of the necessary data files I use for processing map data.

Here's the top level collection of maps for the fire districts in my area. Each directory has a sub-directory where the KMZ fie is broken into separate KML files for those that don't want the entire dataset in one file using Folders. I use a simple utility to produce from the larger file, so please report any issues you may find.

If your fire department isn't listed here, and you'd like some offline maps, contact me. it's easy for me to generate other areas, especially if you have the data in an existing digital format. I can also create basemaps in a variety of formats.

I've often found the hardest part about doing rural GIS for emergency response is finding the data to cleanup and import. Often web servers run by government agencies go up and down, offline for extended periods, or directories get moved. So I'm making much of my raw data available for others. Data is in 3 formats, the original shapefile, the same file converted to OSM format, and a KMZ file, when appropriate, to view the data in a mapping app. The conversion process drops many of the useless data fields, and then changes the field name to the appropriate OSM tag. Names of roads and addresses have been normalized to OSM standards. Some of this data has been imported into OpenStreetMap, but for anyone interested, there is a lot left to be imported. Help is appreciated.

Before doing any large scale importing, please go through this web page on Importing Into OSM to avoid problems. Warning, some of these files are huge. I'm tweaking the conversion software I wrote that generates the parcel maps to be more user friendly.

I've noticed a few issues. Some of the grouping is based on other metadata, mistakes are often fixed by fixing the upstream metadata, which is a good thing. Much of the problem is a lack of consistent metadata tagging. That's mostly all fixed in my fire district, working on the others... Anyway, it's a work in progress. Note that since KML files are just text (XML format), you can use a text editor to rearrange however you want. That's OK for a one time map, but I prefer to automate the process since I regenerate maps as fresh data gets corrected or added.

I've written some documentation on how to install and use these maps.

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