I am on the local VFD and we were paged out to a possible wreck at an address on FM 531 as reported by some crash response like onstar.?ÿ We don't have an FM 531 but we do have a spur 531 that does not show up on any county maps or any road signs. The proper name is US 287 Business . The 531 designation is supposed to be for TxDot internal use only and not on public maps.
We also have a Forest Service Road 531 that is about 10 miles out of town.
I asked dispatch for the Lat / Long of the location and was given:
Lat 31.5148N
Long 95.4801W
and she was very distinct in saying "point" as in decimal. This matches with the spur 531 address but I am not sure that it is actually decimal of a degree.
My question, the odds of any one of the digits circled being a 6, 7, 8, or 9 is 4 chances in 10. If that location is truly in decimal of a degree, what are the odds that none of the 4 digits circled are not a 6, 7, 8, or 9?
We never found a wreck.
For a random location each digit has 6 chances in 10 of being in the set that could be minutes or seconds.
For 4 such digits it is 0.6 ^4 = 0.1296 or about 1 in 7.7 so I'd say uncommon but not improbable.
I had figured it by 60% x 60% x 60% x 60% but I had no idea if I was understanding it right. Thanks for the confirmation.
It has happened before. In 2011 when it was so hot and dry in Texas, we had a fire called in by Civil Air Patrol. We figured out later that they called it in using DMS to DPS Waco. There someone put it in a mapping program using the same numbers but the format was D.dddd
We had someone on the ground in the woods but no fire. I could hear the CAP Flight on the radio on Intercity channel saying they were over the fire but not a fire truck in sight. It took a conference call with me, our dispatch, and the dispatch in Waco to figure out what happened. The fire was about 35 miles Northwest in a different county.
Seems to be a need for inter-agency standards for the format.
I'm always converting back and forth between ddd mm ss and ddd.ddddd in spreadsheets or using?ÿthe calculator.
I try to avoid the packed format ddd.mmss other than on the calculator.
I run into ddd mm.mmm format a lot also in geocaching and other contexts.
Wow.?ÿ Something off of the CST 2 TEST material!!!
@bill93?ÿ
There definitely needs to be a standard. I think part of the problem is people writing software about things they really don't understand and people using that software not understanding the problem.
The website below lists a Loop 531 as Business US 287-V in Grapeland, Texas.
Business routes of U.S. Route 287 in Texas - Wikipedia
Grapeland's coordinates are here:
Grapeland, Tx (findlatitudeandlongitude.com)
From this source, it seems that the dispatcher's coordinates could have been decimal degrees.
On the other hand ....
Using decimal degrees I found the road and the overhead electric utility pole along the east side of the road, and the road, so decimal is what it seems they used.
We run into enough problems with simple road names and 911 addressing by each county.?ÿ This is especially challenging when the county line road has two names, each being unique to the county.?ÿ Yale Road is also 10th Street, for example.?ÿ But, 27000 Road is also 10th Road, depending on which side of the centerline you are standing.
In one county each property's number is based on 1000 possible addresses per mile, in the next there are only 100 possible addresses per mile.?ÿ Thus, you must know that for the county in question in order to determine how far along the mile to expect to find a number ending in 095.?ÿ Is that less than one tenth of the way or almost the entire mile?
Around here at least some of the county line roads are named by the two county names, as Linn-Jones Rd. That avoids one of your problems.
