Heat Map from Firehouse Db

[ClayKitchens]

Does anyone have detailed instructions on:
1.) How to establish a connection to the Firehouse Software database
2.) Query the data to pull incident totals (by site address point) for a heat map

Thank you in advance!

Clay

[AdamCottrell]

Yes, this would be interesting.  We have Fire House too.  We also have a person who creates reports from several of our Info Systems.  I plan on him filtering the data that I need to see in his data warehouse, giving me access to it (via connection through ArcGIS for Desktop), and then geocoding against our site addresses and road segments.  From there you can create a heat map.

First, for me, I need to verify our addresses in the city and we are currently in that process.

[AidanHolmes]

We created a query in Firehouse, when exported (to excel) has the lat/long of each call for geocoding. Bring the excel file into a GDB, open the GDB within ArcMap and add the table. Geocode that table per the lat/long (ours projects as GCS_North_American_1983_CSRS) to display the points within ArcMap. Spatial Analyst will allow you to turn the points geocoded into a heatmap. I typically use 100 for cell size for a countywide area you may need to adjust for smaller or larger areas.

Before we had lat/long data for each call we used AK's or Occupancy ID's as they are called in FH. Without either an AK or Lat/Long it took time to geocode by street address assuming there's a lot of data to geocode. There's a free add in for Excel (geodesix) that uses Google gocoder to populate a lat/long by address within Excel. You are however (last time I checked) limited to 2,500 free geocodes per IP address per 24 hour period.

We haven't automated this process as we run a heat map typically annually unless needed sooner. The process once you've done it a few times isn't too difficult. Our query pulls out a wealth of information that's excellent when geocoded as points and served up as a service via ArcGIS Online. I should note that our Lat/Long (and other call data) are populated automatically via our Dispatch through CAD Monitor into Firehouse.