Evacuation status data collection
It would be amazing if there was a quick add panel in the mobile app. This could be useful for anytime you're collecting data in the field and you want to be able to drop different markers at different points without having to go through adding a marker, changing its style and inputting bunch of information
The use case I'm looking at is specifically for evacuations. It would be super handy for field teams to have a basic panel where marker styles can be selected and assigned as buttons. For evacuations, the icons could be the residence status icons.
Non SAR types might find this type of tool useful for building maps so it would be nice if the icons could be user selected.
For SAR the process would be something like this. . . .
- open the map (user has update privileges)
- select the data collector function
- choose the icons or a predefined set of icons that you want to be on the panel and apply the changes
- tap your desired icon
- enter the house number, name or identifier as the label
- add additional notes if desired
- hit submit
On submit the app captures your current coordinates and adds the chosen marker to the map with the appropriate icon and label being the house number and any comments being posted to the details field.
Proceed to the next house and rinse wash repeat from step 4. There's lots of toys that could be added to this, but those are the basic functions. The end goal is to be able to repeatedly add a select set of markers to a map.
Comments
2 comments
I understand what you're getting at and field data collection can currently involve a lot of clicks, especially in an urban environment where you want to tie dots to specific addresses. While we have hopes to do something broadly similar to this in the long term, in the shorter term we've considered adding a quick list of recently-selected marker styles, so that instead of having to open the full icon picker and find the right icon and then edit the color or orientation, you can just grab one of the 5 most recent icons you've used. People would still have extra clicks the first time they need to choose a new style, but subsequent selections should go faster.
I know it's not exactly what you're asking for, but wondering how that would align with your use case.
The quick list of icons would certainly be helpful, not only in the field but in the Incident Command Post as well. For SAR we predominantly rely on a subset of the available marker styles, but it is nice to have the variety available.
I imagine that if a programmer type wanted to work through the API they could build some functionality to do what I was talking about. Those skills are only in rudimentary form in my toolbox.
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