Dear John,
Thanks for that reference. I have passed it on to the leaders of the
fire service here in Victoria together with my offer to become
involved in the metric training program for our fire fighters. Many
years ago I was a volunteer fire fighter but, alas no more. I fear
that in my current state of fitness I would be an impediment to my
fellow fire fighters.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Geelong, Australia
On 2009/03/26, at 11:44 PM, John M. Steele wrote:
A brief news article:
http://kdrv.com/news/local/101516
Brief quote:
"The biggest challenge Mitchell says he faced was adapting to the
metric system and doing quick conversions."
I guess he was not trained in (or does not use) the US National Grid.
For those not familiar with the USNG, it is a modification of
Universal Transverse Mercator mapping. 100 km squares are designated
with letters (and over very large area with UTM zone and latitude
band) so that coordinates within a square are <100000 m. The tiling
of lettered 100 km squares is similar to the MGRS used by the US
military and NATO allies.
There has been an initiative (obviously not very successful) to
train first responders in USNG and use it as the ONLY location
coordinates in emergencies. The main reason is to avoid numerous
local coordinate systems that will not be understood by emergency
responders brought in from other areas.
Had he been trained and used USNG adapting to Australian mapping
would have been trivial. Perhaps it should be a training
requirement for firefighters certified to work outside their local
area.
NOTE: You can't cover a round earth with squares, so adjustments are
required. UTM zones are 6° of longitude wide, and incomplete
squares exist along the zone edges.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
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