[Talk-us] offline OSM viewers for Windows, for Police/Fire?

[Greg Troxel]

Eric Patrick <txemt1 at gmail.com> writes:

> The program you're seeking will be useless to patrol units and rescuers who
> are looking for the victim(s) of lost or injured because of the lack of
> service and roads in the area. If a victim is 10 miles from the trailhead
> with a broken leg, cell service won't cover that area and the only thing
> that may work is a handheld GPS unit (Garmin has a few on Amazon). Think
> Rocky Mountains. An ambulance or police car won't be able to get to the
> victim, a helicopter may not even be able to get to the victim either.

I'm surprised you are saying that.  I didn't say that every agency
everywhere should do what I'm asking.  I understand that wilderness SAR
is different.  I wasn't trying to make any kind of grand national
proposal, but was asking for advice about my local problem, without
saying one way or the other that my problem is the same as anyone
else's.

In my town, that I know well, the areas in question do have cell service
(almost always good enough to get RTK corrections for trail mapping
even).  The largest one is maybe 1000 acres.  But people do get lost,
they do have medical issue, and they call the police and almost always
E-911 WPH2 works and dispatch has coordinates.  PD and FD go find them
and sometimes carry them out in a Stokes basket if injured.  Here, 99.5%
of the time it's just the PD/FD.  Once in the last few years, it was
also neighboring town police and State Police and a few state-level Fire
resources, but that was only because the missing person was 2, and still
that was a 2-3 hour event (she turned up on the far side of a
conservation area having walked a mile through the woods on trails, just
fine).

My original point was that maps other than OSM don't have very good
trail data, and right now the PD etc. are using Other Maps.  I showed
them OSM (on OsmAnd) and they would like to access the data on windows
PCs.  So I'm trying to figure out how to do that, rather than telling
them that they are doing it wrong.

You mentioned that the only thing that works without cell service is
handled GPS receiver e.g. Garmin.  OsmAnd works fine on a phone in areas
with no cell service (with an external battery pack of course).  I've
used it on I-80 from Moab to Bryce, and in various other places.  I have
a Garmin Etrex 30, with OSM data via mkgmap.  But I was asked for
software to go on a specific existing department platform, not to add
hardware.

@all: I got one off-list comment that OsmAnd is really the only thing
that deals with offline vector really satisfactorily, and maybe there is
some way to wrap OsmAnd and an android emulator to run on Windows.


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