Palm Beach County Schools Strengthen Safety with Indoor Maps Across 200+ Campuses
Ensuring safety across a large school district requires more than traditional emergency plans. For the Palm Beach County School District, the tenth-largest school district in the United States, protecting students and staff means preparing for emergencies across hundreds of campuses and thousands of buildings.
To strengthen situational awareness and emergency response, the district partnered with GeoComm to implement a comprehensive indoor mapping program. Completed in August 2024, the initiative delivered detailed indoor maps for more than 200 schools and approximately 1,700 buildings, giving school police, administrators, 9-1-1 centers, and first responders access to building information during emergencies.
The result is one of the most comprehensive school safety mapping programs in the country. Beyond improving response capabilities, the program helps build confidence across the entire safety ecosystem, from dispatchers and responders to school staff and families, by ensuring that critical information is available when it matters most.
The Challenge: Limited Visibility During Emergencies
Situational awareness is critical when responding to emergencies in schools. Campuses often include multiple buildings, entrances, hallways, and specialized spaces, making it difficult for responders unfamiliar with the facility to quickly locate an incident.
Without clear building information, valuable time can be lost navigating complex layouts. In emergencies, such as medical incidents, fires, or active threats, those lost seconds can significantly impact outcomes.
Indoor maps help eliminate that uncertainty by providing responders with detailed digital floor plans that show classrooms, hallways, entrances, and exits. With this information, responders can better understand the environment before arriving on scene and determine the fastest and safest path to the incident.
The benefits extend beyond first responders. Students and staff benefit from faster emergency response, while district safety teams gain a standardized view of facilities across campuses to support planning, training, and coordination.
Building Indoor Maps for a District of This Scale
Creating indoor maps for one of the nation’s largest school districts requires extensive coordination and data collection.
Beginning in early 2024, GeoComm worked with the Palm Beach County School District Police Department to gather existing building data and conduct field verification where digital plans were not available. GeoComm deployed GIS technicians to capture building interiors using LiDAR scanning technology.
In just four months, the team produced high-quality GIS indoor maps covering:
- More than 200 schools
- Approximately 1,700 buildings
- A district spanning over 2,300 square miles
Once completed, the maps were delivered through GeoComm’s Map Viewer and Map Data Manager applications, allowing district personnel and public safety agencies to interact with the data and maintain updates over time.
Faster Response and Better Coordination
Detailed indoor maps, developed in partnership with Esri using ArcGIS Enterprise (ArcGIS Server), ArcGIS Pro, and the ArcGIS Indoors data model, provide first responders with immediate insight into complex building layouts—enabling them to identify the fastest routes to an incident and act with greater speed and confidence. By structuring the data within the Indoors information model, responders can also locate critical safety assets such as AEDs, fire extinguishers, first aid kits, and utility shutoff valves—information that can directly reduce response times and save lives during a crisis.
A key strength of the solution is its ability to support seamless multi-agency coordination. More than 17 law enforcement agencies and emergency communications centers access a shared, consistent operational picture, made possible through Esri’s platform and a deliberate focus on interoperable data distribution. Indoor mapping data is delivered through APIs and vector tile services, along with formats such as geodatabases, mobile map packages (MMPKs), and PDFs—ensuring compatibility across a wide range of systems, whether used online or offline.
This flexible, integration-first approach reflects the Palm Beach County team’s commitment to meeting partner agencies where they are. By providing data in each agency’s preferred format and supporting existing workflows and applications, the solution has been readily adopted across jurisdictions. In practice, this has extended beyond emergency response, with internal teams such as facilities also leveraging the geodatabase for their own operational needs.
In addition to improving response and coordination, the program also supports compliance with Florida House Bill 301, which requires schools to provide digital mapping data for emergency responders.
As Palm Beach County School District Police Chief Sarah Mooney explains:
“GIS indoor maps fundamentally change how we prepare for and respond to emergencies in our schools. When first responders can see accurate floor plans, room numbers, access points, and utilities before they arrive, they make faster, safer decisions that directly protect students and staff.”
Sustaining a Long-Term Safety Program
Maintaining accurate indoor maps is an ongoing effort. The Palm Beach County School District Police Department’s Emergency Management Division works with school staff and facilities teams to keep building data up to date using GeoComm’s Map Data Manager.
This ensures that responders always have access to the most current facility information as campuses evolve.
A Model for School Safety
Through its partnership with GeoComm, Palm Beach County School District has built one of the most comprehensive indoor school mapping programs in the United States. By combining GIS technology with strong coordination between schools and public safety agencies, the district has significantly improved its ability to prepare for and respond to emergencies.
Indoor maps provide the clarity, coordination, and situational awareness needed to protect students and staff when every second counts.
Learn more about GeoComm’s school safety solutions: https://www.geocomm.com/school-safety/
