From Geomatics Engineering to Public Safety Technology
Nobody sets out to become a 9-1-1 coordinator by way of photogrammetry. But looking back, the path makes more sense than it did while I was living it.
Starting with the data underneath the map
My first real job in this field was as a photogrammetry editor, cleaning up remote sensing data, running volumetric calculations, and processing legacy survey files. It's detail-oriented, unglamorous work — but it teaches you something you can't skip past: every map, every dataset, every GIS layer is built on top of raw data that someone had to inspect, clean, and verify. That habit of checking the data before trusting the output has stuck with me ever since.
That work led me back to school for a degree in Geomatics Engineering, and into survey and GIS work using LiDAR, TopoDOT, and open-source tools like QGIS and PostGIS. Each step added a layer: from editing data, to collecting and processing it, to building the workflows that turned it into something engineers and planners could use.
Widening the lens to infrastructure
From there, the work shifted toward civil infrastructure — using GIS, CAD, and hydraulic modeling tools to support development services engineering. This is where geospatial data stopped being the whole job and started being one input among several: alongside civil design tools, regulatory requirements, and stakeholder coordination. It was a useful shift, because it forced me to think about geospatial work as a means to an end, not an end in itself.
Landing in public safety
The move into emergency communications wasn't a pivot away from any of that — it was where all of it converged. Coordinating telecommunications and GIS infrastructure for a 9-1-1 center draws directly on the geospatial background, but adds a layer of urgency and operational coordination that civil engineering work didn't require in the same way. Earning the Emergency Number Professional certification, and later Project Management Professional certification, was less about changing direction and more about formalizing the two skill sets — public safety operations and project leadership — that this work actually demands.
Why I'm building software now
The newest thread is software development: studying computer science at the graduate level and building web and geospatial applications with React, Node.js, and PostgreSQL/PostGIS. It's a natural next step, not a departure. Every stage of this career has been about turning raw, often messy spatial and operational data into something people can act on — first as maps, then as engineering workflows, now as software. The tools change. The underlying job doesn't.