Distribution of Data - Spatial Mathematics: Theory and Practice through Mapping - page 175

a rough guide to the siren location on which to superimpose considerations
such as property rights, ease of siren maintenance, access, and security. The
City installed two new towers and sirens at these locations (yellow and cyan
configuration in Figure 8.1 ) to complete the coverage so that all residents
were now within 5000 feet of a siren.
8.2.2 Related research
A number of open abstract questions remain: Are the suggested locations for
new sirens the best locations for new sirens? What sorts of analytical tests
might be employed to see how well the suggested locations fit the existing
distribution of data? See the outstanding work of Morton O'Kelley for a care-
ful discussion of such matters (Campbell and O'Kelly, 2012, for example).
Often, there is a gap between the scholarly analysis of real-world problems
and the implementation of solutions. Sometimes the “best” solution is one that
is simple, easy to communicate and to implement, instead of the one that is
technically “best” in some manner. Of course, the optimum is to have the two
approaches mesh; however, that does not always happen.
8.3 Educational and marketing efforts to the public
A final stage in this planning process to fill gaps in an emergency notifica-
tion network was to raise public awareness. Some earlier work during the
late 1970s involving the location of an emergency telephone network on The
Ohio State University campus generated some local interest there, through
some material that appeared in the Columbus Dispatch (Lease, 1979). In Ann
Arbor as well, local municipal officials and others were very effective in get-
ting media coverage recognition from a variety of directions. It appears that
emergency network location problems are an attractive subject to the media!
A summary appears below, at the end in the References section.
By 2003, careful planning for emergency notifications, and associated public
education, had been implemented by outstanding municipal authorities in
the City of Ann Arbor (Washtenaw County, Michigan). In 2012, the pub-
lic were able to see, in a different way, that County-wide planning on the
part of County municipal officials was at least as effective as in the City.
They were also able to see how spatial analysis solved a real world problem.
Unfortunately, the Ides of March test of the county-wide system came about
in the real-world lab of a violent tornado and of an associated storm entering
the system.
Following the tornado, local community activist and mapping enthusiast
Roger Rayle mapped the path of this one tornado in Google Earth and then
set it within the broader spatial context of tornadoes in Michigan. His map
( Figure 8.2 ) , suggests broader uses for mapping software in association with
tornado tracking and with mapping other phenomena that have both a point