In Stanton County, Nebraska, a fatal accident used to mean two to three hours of a closed highway while investigators measured and photographed the scene by hand. Today, using a drone and Nova, that same scene takes 15 to 45 minutes to clear, a reduction of 80 to 90 percent depending on the size of the accident.

That change comes down to one person. Mike Frohberg is both Stanton County's emergency management director and its drone pilot, which puts him on call for fatal accidents, fire overwatch, storm damage, search and rescue, and ice jam monitoring along the region's rivers, often alongside various agencies.

Showing up to help an agency he's never worked with raises an obvious problem: everyone already runs their own mapping software, and asking a neighboring county or a state trooper to buy a new subscription just to look at one project was never realistic. "We all have a primary program we have been using," Frohberg said, "but nothing has shared workspaces like Nova."

That shared workspace now travels with him. When Frohberg is called to another county to map a fatality accident or a large fire, he builds a workspace with that county's officers already in it, so they can add their own measurements and corrections directly instead of waiting on him to send files back and forth. "The shared workspace is huge," he said. "I can easily create a workspace that has their officers in it to make the corrections or measurements that they need to complete their report."

That same habit of pulling other people in extends past accident scenes. During ice jam monitoring and storm damage response, Frohberg streams live drone video directly to the National Weather Service office in Nebraska and to incident command in the field, something a previous platform's lag and dropped feeds made unreliable. "This has been huge in assisting them with tornado damage tracking and flood monitoring," he said. One department keeps his live feed up at their station so they can confirm damage and route resources without waiting for someone to drive out and look.

The same approach carries into search and rescue, where he uses Nova's Colorfinder tool to help spot someone missing in a field or recreational area, and into the planning side of the job, where he prints large-format maps for a mobile command post ahead of planned events.

"The ability to share workspaces and allow partner agencies to view and edit maps without requiring individual subscriptions has significantly enhanced collaboration in planning, mapping, and real-world emergency response operations," said Mike Frohberg, Director, Stanton County Emergency Management Agency.

Frohberg has made Nova his primary mapping platform, but the list of situations it covers keeps growing, not because the emergencies have changed, but because every new agency he brings into a shared workspace is one fewer phone call standing between a scene and a resolution.