Teach the incident map your own site before anything happens: named exits, shaded sections, cordons and routes, in groups operators switch on and off. Measured as you draw, and in and out as GeoJSON.
What It's For
A basemap knows the streets. It doesn't know that the door beside the loading bay is what every steward calls Exit 4, or which block of seating Team Bravo holds. The venue map is where you teach it: named points, lines and shaded areas, drawn once before anything happens and shown under the live positions on the incident map during every incident. "Everyone still in Block C" is only something you can act on if Block C is drawn.
Open Security Ops → Security Settings → Venue Map. Drawing and editing need security_ops.manage; everyone who can open the incident map sees what you draw.
Groups
Everything you draw belongs to a group, and a group is what an operator switches on and off in the map's Layers menu. Name a group after the question it answers (Exit names, Section commanders, Fire routes) so that during an incident someone can show the two sets that matter tonight rather than everything at once.
New group — Give it a name, an optional description, a default colour, and whether it is On by default on the incident map.
Drawing here — One group at a time is highlighted as the one new shapes go into. Click any group to draw into it instead. Opening an annotation switches to that annotation's group.
Order — Move up and Move down in a group's ⋯ menu set the order operators see in the Layers menu.
Hide while editing — The eye hides a group in the editor only. It has no effect on the incident map.
Archive — Takes a group off the incident map but keeps everything in it, ready to restore next season. Delete removes the group and everything in it.
Drawing
Pick a tool from the toolbar or press its key. While a tool is on, the banner at the top of the map names the group the shape will go into and says what the tool is waiting for next.
Point (P) — Click a spot: a gate, a defibrillator, the control room.
Line (L) — Click along a route, a barrier or a cordon line. Press Enter or double-click to finish.
Area (A) — Click each corner of a region. Click the first corner again, press Enter or double-click to close it.
Trace (T) — Drag to draw an area freehand and release to finish. The quick way to shade a concourse.
Circle (C) — Click the centre, then click the edge. For an exact distance, type the radius in metres after the centre and press Enter: a 100 m cordon is 100 m in every direction on the ground.
Select (V) — Put the tool down to pan the map and click annotations to open them.
While you draw a line or an area, Backspace removes the last point and Esc clears what you have drawn. Press Esc again to put the tool down.
Naming a Shape
When you finish a shape, a card opens in the list inside the group it is going into, with the name field ready. Type the name your team uses out loud and press Enter. The button reads Save to followed by the group's name, so you can check before anything is written. If it is the wrong group, click the right one in the list and the new shape moves there.
Draw a run — The tool stays on after you save, so a row of exits is click, name, Enter, click, name, Enter. Each new shape starts with the symbol you last used in that group.
Undo — The confirmation after saving offers Undo, which puts the shape back unsaved and still named, ready to go into a different group.
Symbols and Colours
Give a point or a shape a symbol so it reads at a glance: exits and entrances, first aid, defibrillators, ambulance and rendezvous points, steward posts, search points, barriers, safe rooms, toilets, stages, ticketing and more. The picker files them under Ways in and out, Help and safety, Security, Facilities and Event.
Colours are named by what they mean rather than by hue (Standard, Information, Safe / muster, Caution, Hazard / no-go and Neutral) and the set is fixed. On the incident map red already means someone needs help now, and a free colour picker would eventually shade a seating block in exactly that red. By default an annotation takes its group's colour.
Show from — Hold an annotation back until the map is zoomed in to Site, Area or Detail level, so two hundred seat-block names are not a mat of text at site scale. The editor always shows everything.
Draw the name — Turn it off to keep a shape's name to its hover label, for when its colour already says it.
Notes — Shown when an operator hovers over the annotation during an incident, for example staffed from 18:00.
Measurements
Lines and areas are measured as you draw them, up to the pointer, so the figure is in the banner before you commit. The list shows each line's length and each area's size, and opening an annotation shows its measurements in full.
Lines — Length, and a walking time at 1.2 metres a second: an unhurried adult pace on the flat. Treat it as the quickest the route can be walked. A crowd, stairs or reduced mobility take longer.
Areas — Area, perimeter, and how many people the floor space holds at three densities: 0.3 m² per person (standing spectators), 0.5 m² (a concert or dance floor) and 0.7 m² (a concourse or queue). These are the floor space factors that fire-safety guidance, Approved Document B, gives for those kinds of space.
Circles — Show their radius and area as you draw. A circle is saved as an area, so it has an area's measurements too.
A floor-space figure is not a safe capacity. Your safe capacity comes from your fire risk assessment, which accounts for your exits, their widths and your layout. The Martyn's Law thresholds of 200 and 800 people appear beside the figure for scale only: which tier applies to premises turns on the number of people reasonably expected to be present at the same time, not on floor area.
Changing an Annotation
Click an annotation in the list, or on the map, and its details open in place under its group. Symbol, colour, Show from and Draw the name save as you change them; the name and notes save with Save or Enter.
Move a point — Drag its marker on the map.
Move a line or area — Choose Move. The shape follows the pointer; click where it goes, or press Esc to cancel.
Duplicate — Choose Duplicate and click where the copy goes. It keeps the group, symbol, colour and notes, and opens ready to rename.
Redraw — Draw the shape again. The new one replaces the old and keeps its name and settings.
Change group — Pick another group in the annotation's Group field, or drag its row onto a group in the list.
Working on Many at Once
Tick annotations to move or remove them together. A bar above the list shows how many are ticked.
Tick — Use a row's checkbox, Cmd- or Ctrl-click rows, Shift-click to tick a range, or Shift-click shapes on the map. Select all in group is in the group's ⋯ menu.
Move — Choose Move to… in the bar, or drag any ticked row onto a group.
Remove — Choose Remove in the bar, or press Delete. You are asked to confirm, with the count.
Clear — Press Esc, or choose Clear.
Importing and Exporting GeoJSON
GeoJSON is the open map format that GIS tools such as QGIS read and write. Export one group from its ⋯ menu, or everything at once with Export above the map. A file exported from here keeps each annotation's name, notes, symbol, colour and zoom setting, so importing it brings the annotations back as they were.
To import, choose Import GeoJSON… in the menu of the group it should go into and pick the file. Nothing is written until you have seen what the file holds and confirmed.
What is read — Points, lines and areas. A feature made of several parts arrives as one annotation per part, numbered.
Names — Taken from each feature's name, label or title. Anything unnamed is numbered (Point 1, Point 2). Formatting in a description is removed and the text kept as notes.
Areas with holes — Brought in as their outer edge.
Detailed shapes — Anything with more than 500 points is simplified to 500, keeping its outline.
Coordinates — Must be latitude and longitude (WGS 84, EPSG:4326), which is what GeoJSON normally holds. A file in British National Grid or another projected system is flagged, with how to export it again, rather than drawn in the wrong place.
A workspace holds up to 2,000 annotations in up to 40 groups. The import preview tells you if a file is larger than the room you have left.
Keyboard Shortcuts
V — Select and pan.
P, L, A, T, C — Point, line, area, trace and circle.
Enter — Finish a line or area; save a new shape's name.
Backspace — Remove the last point while drawing.
Esc — Clear a half-drawn shape, then put the tool down. Also cancels a move or copy, and clears ticked rows.
Delete — Remove the ticked annotations, after you confirm.
Shortcuts never fire while you are typing in a field.