Incident Map Tutorial
The Rochester911.com incident map allows you to view crime calls for service, and fire department calls for service all plotted on a map of Olmsted County. You can use this to see what crimes or fire incidents are happening in your neighborhood. I will go over the basic three steps to using the incident map, and then I will list some “gotchas” to watch out for.
Step 1: Find an area of the map you are interested in
This seems straight forward, but it is the first important step to viewing your emergency calls for service. As a first step, you can type in your address of interest into the “Menu Options” address entry form, choose the city, and click the magnifying glass button to find that address.
If you do not want to view a particular address, you can use the map tools (zoom, pan, drag) to focus in on the particular area of Olmsted County that you want to view incidents for.
Note: The map performs best when you pick the smallest area that you are interested in, as not to overload the map with too many icons you may not be interested in, so feel free to zoom in to see only the area of interest to you.
Step 2: Choose the types of incidents to map
Immediately to the right of the address entry form, there is a red button labeled “Choose Categories”. When you click this button, you get a selection of different fire and crime calls for service categories that you can select, or deselect. Choose the categories you have an interest in, then click “Done”.
Note: Call categories such as the Parking Issues and Traffic Stops/Accidents create many, many icons, so if those are not of particular interest you will have a less cluttered map by not selecting them. If those are of interest, of course then you can keep them chosen.
Step 3: Choose the date range
To the right of the category selection button is another red button labeled “Choose Dates”. You can click this button to select the starting date and ending date for plotting calls for service. When you click that button, two calendars pop up, the first calendar lets you navigate and then select a starting date. To select the date, you click directly on that day on the calendar. The second calendar on the right is where you select an ending date. If you only want to view a single day, select the same date on both calendars. 
Note: If you are zoomed in close to an address and only have a couple call categories selected, then you can feel free to have a wide date range (months). If you are looking at a large part of the city, and/or you have a lot of call categories selected, then you may want to limit the date range to a few days, or a few weeks.
Summary
That’s it! You have mastered the Rochester911.com Incident Map! You, of course, are allowed to try any variation of the above options, just take note that if your map brings back 500 or more incident points, you will only see the first 500 and you will get a message that you may want to either zoom in on the map, filter out more categories, or choose less of a date range.
Thank you for viewing this tutorial, and I hope you find this incident map very useful!
If you have any other questions, comments, or feedback, feel free to use the “Send Us Feedback” link at the top of each page. We would love to hear from you!
