In response to mass shootings, school districts are hiring companies to create digital maps of their campuses for quicker emergency response. More than 20 states have enacted or proposed digital school mapping measures in the past few years, according to the Associated Press. As required by a new burst of state laws, maps must be overlaid with aerial imagery and gridded coordinates, “oriented true north” and “contain site-specific labeling” for rooms, doors, hallways, stairwells, utility locations, hazards, key boxes, trauma kits and automated external defibrillators.
Critical Response Group, run by an Army special operations veteran, has been driving the trend. The New Jersey-based company’s CEO Mike Rodgers recently told lawmakers in Maryland that he had used gridded digital maps during deployments and was surprised the school where his wife taught had nothing similar. So he mapped her school, then expanded it to 12,000 schools and counting, nationwide. “When an emergency happens at a school or a place of worship, most likely it’s the first time those responders have ever gone there,” Rodgers told the AP. Because of their detailed information, digital school maps are exempt from public disclosure under legislation in some states, to prevent the information from landing in the hands of potential shooters.
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