Military-style maps for Savannah schools designed to aid response time to emergencies

The Savannah-Chatham County Public School System has overhauled its database of school maps using an emerging technology meant to help first responders navigate unfamiliar buildings in the event of an active-shooter scenario or other emergency.

Critical incident mapping is new this academic year at all 55 SCCPSS schools, after the district consulted with cartographers and U.S. military special operations veterans at New Jersey-based Critical Response Group.

SCCPSS emergency manager Justin Pratt said that the district is now more prepared to quickly provide precise locations to police, firefighters and other first responders if and when a disaster strikes.

“You don’t have to have some sort of technical baseline of how to read a blueprint to figure out where something is on the map,” Pratt said. “They’ve got a grid reference system. So, it’s essentially lining up G-10, like “Battleship”-style, where a location is.”

Pratt said that when he first started working at SCCPSS, there was no consistent standard among the district’s maps.

“We had everything from new construction that had architectural drawings and renderings and super detailed blueprints to some of our older buildings that may have had an outdated blueprint or map, or something in between where an art teacher drew something 30 years ago,” he said. “And that’s what the schools were using for evacuation.”

Critical Response Group redesigned all of the district’s existing maps into a consistent and easy-to-understand style, and walked through every SCCPSS school to ensure accuracy.

The project cost $174,990 and was paid for through funds from a supplemental local sales tax approved by Chatham County voters in 2016.

At least 11 states this year passed laws or began initiatives that provide public funding for critical incident mapping at schools. Georgia was not among them.

Many schools in the U.S. are resorting to alternative safety measures such as critical incident mapping to better respond to mass shootings. A $48 million high school in Michigan was recently built with architectural features designed to minimize damage from an active shooter, including curved hallways to impair a gunman’s line of sight and concrete barriers for students to seek cover.

This story comes to The Current GA through a reporting partnership with GPB News, a non-profit newsroom covering the state of Georgia.