127 Public Safety through the playoffs, each subsequent win and series ratcheted up interest and attendance at the games. The primary GIS toolset Cobb County relied on includes ArcGIS Mission; it tracked the location of roving plainclothes officers working throughout The Battery. With command-and-control software, the incident commanders in the operations center could make tactical resource assignments and get real-time updates from the field, and then share information across teams. The fact that the app could be accessed on a smartphone was key to the stealth requirements of the operation. “Undercover officers are in a unique situation because they don’t have radios,” Lana said. “But everyone on the planet has a smartphone, and nobody is going to think twice about someone looking at a map on their phone. On the app, officers could see each other and where a dangerous situation was happening, and in the command center, we knew no officer could get lost in the crowds.” Other smartphone features also came in handy. “Our analysts,” Lorens said, “could look up a license plate tag or provide background information. When it’s just a text, that can get siloed between two people, and here everybody was able to see it and add to it if needed.” Putting the Wraps on a Stellar Season For Cobb County’s World Series games, the use of Mission was tactical, guiding public safety response to incidents involving unruly behavior. “There were a lot of drunk people everywhere,” Lana said. “Each time the Braves won, the crowds got bigger and crazier.” For Lorens, and his public safety team, a map was key to keeping control of rowdy situations. “We were able to see where our people are and put them in places so everybody else saw them,” he said. “For commanders, we could make sure we had coverage so that nothing critical happened.” Lorens and his team applied GIS in a more integrated way for the victory parade where the ability to track officers and floats in real time was critical, ensuring safety and easing traffic disruptions. It’s a method the county will employ moving forward. “Now we’ve got a blueprint,” Lana said. Lorens added, “I plan to build out the map of where we had bottlenecks and where we responded with more staff, and I’ll keep that in my back pocket.” A detailed dashboard of traffic around the stadium helped traffic managers keep traffic moving during the games. The operations center combined personnel from all emergency service agencies who used maps for awareness and to guide activity.
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