Monday, March 17, 2014

Android App for monitoring 911 call incidents in Seattle, Washington

With this Android app, users can monitor the City of Seattle's Fire Department's real time 911 dispatches (which is updated every 5 minutes), the Police Department's 911 Dispatch Incident responses (only non-confidential and updated every 4 hours) and Report Incidents (updated within 6 to 12 hours). The incidents can be viewed as a text list or on a map as marker icons or as a heat map. Examples of incidents include burglary, accident, fire, assault, drugs, death, and many more. Incident details can be viewed by touching an item on the list or a marker icon on the map display. A function is available to easily filter away unwanted incidents from the list or map by text. The app allows the user to send the location  to Google Maps and/or Street View for better visualization of the 911 call incident environment.

Upon launching the app, the list of incidents will be downloaded and displayed with associated icons as shown below.

The list of incidents can be filtered by using the Filter command, which is activated by selecting the Filter icon on the Action Bar or menu item. This will toggle the display of the filter text entry field. As you type in any text e.g. traffic, the incident list is dynamically updated.


To view all the incidents on a map, simply select the Map option item in the Action Bar menu. The filter (if any) remains in effect util it is cleared. Touching any incident icon will pop up a snippet of information about the incident. Touching the snippet will display the incident details.


Instead of visualizing the incidents as marker icons, choosing the Heat map option item in the Action Bar menu will render the incidents as a heat map, as shown below. To display as marker icons again, just choose the Markers option item in the Action Bar menu.


Long pressing any item in the incident list will pop up a menu, as shown below, where the selected incident can be shared, located on a map, or sent to the Google Maps or Street View app.


To refresh the call incidents or select a different incident feed, touch the Refresh option item in the Action Bar menu.
 
The app can be downloaded from Google Play.
Get it on Google Play

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