• There has been a recent cluster of spammers accessing BARFer accounts and posting spam. To safeguard your account, please consider changing your password. It would be even better to take the additional step of enabling 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) on your BARF account. Read more here.

WTF is CHP thinking with their 'new' Incident Page??

Climber said:
They're now showing the 'lat and lon', but I suspect that it is really pixels on a map or offsets from an arbitrary starting position. They certainly don't match any local lat/lon values.
Click to expand...

The tbxy coordinates are relative to the center tag.
See geoConvertTBXY() for the Sacramento, SLO and Fresno comm/dispatch centers.
See http://www.chp.ca.gov/depts_divs_offs/dispatchcenters.html for all CHP communication centers.

e.g.
GGCC -> Golden Gate Communications Center
1551 Benicia Road
Vallejo 94591-7568

This is approximately: 38.085628, -122.202795

Grabbing some GGCC incident data from the xml...

tbxy:
6043421, 2128915
6048874, 2118027
5991498, 2085191
6054990, 2125580

Approximate coordinates (longitude, latitude) based on sigalert/google traffic data for the same incidents:
-122.293797, 37.829311
-122.274957, 37.798662
-122.471166, 37.705146
-122.254679, 37.819514

tbx scale: 0.0000034843
longitude scale: 1.17306

tby scale: 0.00000275533
latitude scale: 0.83924

FYI these scaling factors may be a bit off because I wasn't particularly careful with my rounding.

PHP: 
<Center ID = "GGCC">
	<Dispatch ID = "GGCC">
		<Log ID = "2163D0607">
			<LogTime>"6/7/2011 9:37:06 PM"</LogTime>
			<LogType>"1125A - Traffic Hazard - Loose Animal"</LogType>
			<Location>"SB I680 JNO SR24"</Location>
			<Area>"Contra Costa"</Area>
			<ThomasBrothers>"612 5B"</ThomasBrothers>
			<TBXY>"6108173:2153096"</TBXY>
			<LogDetails>
				<details>
					<DetailTime>" 9:37PM"</DetailTime>
					<IncidentDetail>"LIVE DEER RUNNING AROUND IN CD"</IncidentDetail>
				</details>
			</LogDetails>
		</Log>
...
 
More info on the communication center abbreviations

From: http://cad.chp.ca.gov/
PHP: 
    <option value="BFCC">Bakersfield</option>
    <option value="BSCC">Barstow</option>
    <option value="BICC">Bishop</option>
    <option value="BOCC">Border</option>
    <option value="CCCC">Capitol</option>
    <option value="CHCC">Chico</option>
    <option value="ECCC">El Centro</option>
    <option value="FRCC">Fresno</option>
    <option value="GGCC">Golden Gate</option>
    <option value="HMCC">Humboldt</option>
    <option value="IDCC">Indio</option>
    <option value="INCC">Inland</option>
    <option value="LACC">Los Angeles</option>
    <option value="MRCC">Merced</option>
    <option value="MTCC">Monterey</option>
    <option value="OCCC">Orange</option>
    <option value="RDCC">Redding</option>
    <option value="STCCSACC">Sacramento</option>
    <option value="SLCC">San Luis Obispo</option>
    <option value="SKCC">Stockton</option>
    <option value="SUCC">Susanville</option>
    <option value="TKCC">Truckee</option>
    <option value="UKCC">Ukiah</option>
    <option value="VTCC">Ventura</option>
    <option value="YKCC">Yreka</option>

All area offices (corresponding to the "Area" tag?): http://cad.chp.ca.gov/HTM.Net/locations.htm
...in a slightly more readable format: http://www.chp.ca.gov/depts_divs_offs/offices.html
...and with pictures! http://www.chp.ca.gov/recruiting/docs/873_81007_Geo.pdf
 
jprimero said:
The tbxy coordinates are relative to the center tag.
See geoConvertTBXY() for the Sacramento, SLO and Fresno comm/dispatch centers.
See http://www.chp.ca.gov/depts_divs_offs/dispatchcenters.html for all CHP communication centers.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info!

I'm not sure when I'll put in a googleMaps link, but it seems like a good idea.

I combined the 3 local regions into one for parsing the Bay Area because plenty of BARF riders go into those areas or live there.

One thing that bugs me is when they have records like the one listed in the thread 'possible fatality in Santa Cruz this morning' where there is no reference to 'mc' anywhere, which is what I'm using to determine if it's a motorcycle incident. The only hint is Road Rash, but that could apply to a bicycle accident as well and could even be the case.
 
Last edited:
psychocandy said:
maybe it's because they're not really designing it for the general populace? don't wanna state the obvious, but there are probably a lot of people who don't even know about this page. and even some of the people who might be interested in this page aren't really geeky enough to figure out what all that gobbledy-gook means? it's nice to know all that info is available, but if i REALLY wanna know what's going on in CHP communications, i'll learn how to decipher what they're taking about. i don't think it's really up to the CHP to make it palatable to me, Mr. Civilian.
Click to expand...
It's not really a matter of it being 'palatable', it's more about it actually doing what it's supposed to.

It's just pure incompetence and done on the taxpayer's dime (probably significantly more than that).
 
Climber said:
Thanks for the info!

I'm not sure when I'll put in a googleMaps link, but it seems like a good idea.

I combined the 3 local regions into one for parsing the Bay Area because plenty of BARF riders go into those areas or live there.

One thing that bugs me is when they have records like the one listed in the thread 'possible fatality in Santa Cruz this morning' where there is no reference to 'mc' anywhere, which is what I'm using to determine if it's a motorcycle incident. The only hint is Road Rash, but that could apply to a bicycle accident as well and could even be the case.
Click to expand...

Yeah...there are definitely some consistency issues with how the data is reported.

As a side note, I don't think the longitude/latitude conversion is exactly right. For now, at least it's good enough for an approximate location.

The ThomasBrothers tag likely corresponds to a page number + grid number on a map, but using CHP communication centers as reference points for xy coordinates seems kind of strange (unless CHP commissioned someone to create the coordinate system...).

Edit: Had another thought. Maybe an origin for the xy coordinates is defined for each page of the map.
 
Last edited:
jprimero said:
Yeah...there are definitely some consistency issues with how the data is reported.

As a side note, I don't think the longitude/latitude conversion is exactly right. For now, at least it's good enough for an approximate location.

The ThomasBrothers tag likely corresponds to a page number + grid number on a map, but using CHP communication centers as reference points for xy coordinates seems kind of strange (unless CHP commissioned someone to create the coordinate system...).

Edit: Had another thought. Maybe an origin for the xy coordinates is defined for each page of the map.
Click to expand...

The coordinates may comply with the mapping they set up after their vendor got caught reselling copyrighted Thomas Bros maps to the CHP.
 
xlcr said:
The coordinates may comply with the mapping they set up after their vendor got caught reselling copyrighted Thomas Bros maps to the CHP.
Click to expand...
I do know that for the short period of time that they had a map, it was about as bad as a map could get. Their markers were something that you'd expect from a grade school computer student, at best.
 
I put a few more minutes into my app, it exceeds the P.O.S. on the CHP site and shows only motorcycle incidents around the Bay Area including Monterrey and Humboldt areas.

You can look back at incidents up to 1 week back.

Bay Area CHP Motorcycle Incidents
 
I'll retreat to my cave now and rub some sticks together. That's how I feel after reading some of the posts above.
 
I wouldn't call it a 'labor of love', just doing something about a P.O.S. rather than just sitting around bitchin about it.

Besides, it's always bugged me when trying to find an incident earlier in the day and not being able to find it. Now I'll have every single event in a database that I can go back to and find. It also seemed useful to have a page that would show only (for the most part) motorcycle events, though I'm currently saving every one for now in case I need to refine my string comparison routines for finding motorcycle events.
 
github

Great work. You should put this code on github so people can help and continue improving it. I'm not saying I can at the moment but I'd like to see what you did.
 
One funny thing that I'm seeing with the results is the number of 'Pedestrian on the Roadway' incidents where the second line says 'MC on RHS' or 'MC on CD'.

I'm guessing that a large percentage of those are Harley's that broke down! :laughing
 
More likely the rider forgot that he was already on reserve.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top