DTRS organization thoughts - input needed

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PJH

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In the hopes of not starting a major thing here, what are peoples thoughts on separating out major users on DTRS from the county listings?

Our guidelines already provide for this, but when we go and take what was once a small system on its birth, and it just seems to stay that way - and have it split up to a more manageable list - some people always throw large flags on the play.

What a few of us have been doing on new statewide systems is the following format:


Interop Talkgroups

State Agencies

County A
-City A
-City B
-City C

County B
-City A
-City B
-City C

(etc)

Regional Authorities
Non Public Safety (Transit, etc)

FRCC is generally setup this way, and I personally haven't had any negative feedback.

The benefit of this format is that cities and towns with a large number of talkgroups can be split off the county section. In addition for GPS aware products, the GPS range will cover the intended area vs scanning the entire town/city in the county, when in some cases the next town over is 20mi or more away.

With the split, we can also remove some extrataous data from the descrption field that would no longer be needed.

For instance, to denote public works from cities and counties, you can have:

Any County
Public Works 1

Any City
Public Works 1

vs

Any County
Any County Public Works 1
Any City Public Works 1
Another City Public Works 1
Another City Public Works 2
Peoples Republic of Pot DPW 4

Those who have display scanners with very limited characters will benefit greatly, by not having the entire municipal name in the description field, as the category will already be named for the city/town.

This also lets you selectively chose who you want to scan by area (category) vs locking out 40 different talkgroups all contained in one large section.

A couple of examples:

https://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?sid=7768 (FRCC)
https://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?sid=8010 (Oregon - still being built out)

Curious on thoughts on this.

Thanks!
 

Spitfire8520

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I think this is a reasonable idea, but it would take a lot of paying attention to details to get it right.

I have noticed that quite often the locations are set to a default Google Maps coordinates that is far from the center and creates a lopsided circle. These changes also tend to not use correct boundaries as references. It is even harder with special districts as their boundaries are most often in the form of GIS shapefiles that aren't found on a map.

There is also the fact that Colorado's system has a lot of different entities operating that could make it a bit messy. I would guess that the number of talkgroup categories would easily exceed 200. There will probably also need to be a lot of use of the misc text field as quite few places might operate on a County's dispatch, but then have their own little talkgroup for misc things. Being a visitor can easily become confusing if they are not pointed in the right direction.

Just using Arapahoe County as an example:
  • Arapahoe County
    • Aurora
    • Bow Mar/Columbine Valley (Two Towns, but they share a TG, PD operates on Arapahoe County)
    • Centennial
    • Cherry Hills (PD operates on Arapahoe County)
    • Englewood
    • Glendale
    • Greenwood Village
    • Littleton
    • Sheridan (PD operates on Arapahoe County)
    • East MetCom/East Metro Fire
    • Littleton Fire Rescue (Different from Littleton)
    • MetCom/South Metro Fire
    • Arapahoe Community College
    • Byers School District (Different from Byers)
    • Centennial Airport (Not in Centennial)
    • Cherry Creek School District
    • Littleton School District (Different from Littleton)
    • South Suburban Parks and Recreation
 

PJH

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My thoughts have been that such agencies that are county dispatched/operate under etc would remain with the county listing, which I think would be the best course of action. If they grow enough over time, then we could look at separating them out as needed. Of course we don't need 15 categories with single talkgroups as that would make the web experience horrendous as well.

I'd like to hear from others, and I would be willing to find a test county to split up
 

UPMan

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OTOH, scanners that use location control benefit from having a town's agencies grouped under a single subcategory rather than lumped in with all the other towns in that county. I understand the push-pull on this issue. In general, my vote is always to more granularity in the data. Maybe a compromise, where larger towns that have n or more channels get split out into their own subcategory. I agree it makes the web experience bad if each one-horse...er...one-channel town gets its own subcategory. But, it makes a bad scanner experience if a channel on the far side of a big county gets selected even though you are no where near its area of interest.
 

Spitfire8520

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So it looks like the first phase of this project has begun. The list of the most recent changes is as follows.

  • Otero County
    • Cheraw
    • Fowler
    • La Junta
    • Manzanola
    • Rocky Ford
  • Phillips County
    • Amherst
    • Haxtun
    • Holyoke
  • Pitkin County
    • Aspen
    • Basalt
  • Prowers County
    • Holly
    • Lamar
    • Wiley
  • Pueblo County
    • Beulah
    • Boone
    • Pueblo
    • Pueblo West
    • Rye
  • Rio Blanco County
    • Meeker
    • Rangely
  • Rio Grande County
    • Del Norte
    • Monte Vista
    • South Fork
  • Routt County
    • Steamboat Springs
  • Saguache County
    • Center
    • Crestone
  • San Juan County
    • Silverton
  • San Miguel County
    • Egnar
    • Mountain Village
    • Norwood
    • Telluride
  • Miscellaneous Talkgroups (x2)

My biggest concern is the blending of fire/special districts into the city that they share the names with. Many of these districts are much larger than the city/community they share names with. This becomes a big mess since it does not follow the 6.6. Geographic Tagging requirements in the Database Administrator Handbook. My concerns with under representing these districts is obvious as someone's location controlled scanner will not correctly turn on even though they might be well within one of these districts. A number examples follows.

 

abqscan

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I dislike the new format. When traveling to areas that I'm not familiar with, it is easier to dump the entire county into a list, vs, trying to figure out if a specific HOA has a fire department that covers some chunk of land.
 

PJH

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The format is being used for most wide area systems. This prevents from people scanning/loading talkgroups that have a 1 mile radius in a listing of 30 or more miles.

It’s no different than the normal county listings where you have the county then the individual cities under the county.

The majority of complaints are that you have channels or talkgroups that are effectively given wide area ranges when they are not wide area talkgroups.

As for the first response, we can touch up what needs to be touched up when completed.

More to come as it’s adjusted.
 
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