Issue Archive: August 2006

High-Tech Options Bring Rural County to Forefront of Advanced Solutions for 9-1-1

Occupying more than 628 square miles in east central Alabama, Elmore County is the third fastest growing county in the state. The county’s rising population is currently estimated to be approximately 74,000 (2004 census). Compared to larger metropolitan counties, small counties such as Elmore may be more challenged on the issues of prioritizing, developing and funding new solutions for their public safety needs.

Connecting Anywhere

In order to better meet the needs of its growing community, Elmore County public safety officials took an approach that enabled them to conduct a thorough investigation of existing technologies and costs, review where the industry was headed and create a technology road map. The end result was a completely redesigned, sophisticated VoIP deployment for their 9-1-1 system that went live in December 2004.

Under the technical direction of Lee Moore, principle for 911 Consult, Inc., the new system enables the five PSAPs within the county to have a wide range of flexible and redundant configurations at each PSAP that enable continued operations during times of outages, catastrophic incidents or other factors that could otherwise impair 9-1-1 service to the community.

Taking that approach one step further, Moore, an engineer with an extensive background in public safety who also volunteered for 10 years as the vice chairman on the county’s 9-1-1 board, helped to design a system that incorporates a laptop PC to become an instant PSAP for the county, complete with each county PSAP’s core data and service configuration. “Should we need to instantly relocate one or all of our PSAPs, we have the ability to immediately bring this technology online and seamlessly continue uninterrupted service,” says Moore. This creative approach has won the county recognition by the E9-1-1 Institute in Washington, D.C. (www.e911institute.org) as the recipient of the 2006 “Outstanding 9-1-1 Program” award that was presented in March of this year.

“It used to be that we would worry about making sure that our communications centers were structurally sound, secure and hardened,” says Moore. “But with our diverse networking capabilities, it becomes less important where you are, and more important that you can touch the network at any given time. We were able to design a redundant system that was also mobile—anywhere there’s a network connection, we can have a PSAP.”

New Technologies

The county began investigating new technologies in the early 1990s in order to advance their capabilities into the future. “We had a number of objectives we were trying to achieve,” Moore says. “We wanted to be prepared for the future in terms of our technical capabilities, reduce our fixed costs for network operations as well as reduce our monthly recurring costs.”

Each of the primary towns, Eclectic, Millbrook, Tallasee and Wetumpka, have their own PSAP located in their police department’s headquarters. The county’s fifth and most active PSAP is operated from the county sheriff’s office. The county’s five PSAPs field a combined monthly total of 9-1-1 calls averaging more than 4,200 calls, with more than 50 percent of those being wireless.

Previously, the county had four separate PSAP systems in each location; a fifth could not be cost justified. In the process of investigating new technologies, the county 9-1-1 board made an open invitation to equipment and technology companies to host new technologies that the county could test and work with the companies to provide feedback on equipment effectiveness.

After a year of evaluation, the county settled on the following configuration:

• Calls to 9-1-1 anywhere in the county are simultaneously routed to two geographically dispersed network servers.
• Selective routing, an intelligent software program, which automatically identifies the location and jurisdiction of inbound calls for service, converts the analog calls to digital signal and using VoIP technology from TCI, routes each call to its appropriate PSAP.
• The network is able to automatically know if all answering stations into the designated PSAP are either busy, not operational or not answered and reroute any blocked call for service to another PSAP where call takers can answer the call as a dispatcher in the original PSAP.
• The county has uniquely designed a portable (flight-case/suitcase) mobile PSAP unit that can be set up anywhere in the county with a network connection. The self-contained unit is comprised of a laptop PC with each PSAP’s IP protocols built in, IP phones, a TTY modem and other equipment. Should one PSAP go down for any reason, the mobile PSAP can go to any other PSAP and begin taking calls as the one PSAP that is down. Each of the county’s PSAPs can also be configured on the fly as another PSAP in the county to assist in overflow situations.

To update the system with the county’s growing population, all the local telcos download new phone numbers and address data to Intrado which then sends the updates nightly to the primary database.

Adding the Visual Component

As part of the county’s addressing and location data, the county uses ESRI’s ArcView software for parcel data mapping, centroid data from the county’s assessor’s office and Pictometry’s (Rochester, NY) oblique aerial imaging database and measuring software. This enables the 9-1-1 headquarters to remain up-to-date on the community growth.

“We use it everyday,” says Elmore County 9-1-1 Director Annette De-Vaughn. “With new parcels and developments springing up, we use our oblique aerial imaging system to review new roads, construction of developments and match this with the data sets from GIS and the Assessor’s office. This enables us to verify property data, building locations and jurisdictional boundaries to ensure that for each address, should a call for service be initiated, it can be properly routed to the appropriate PSAP.”

Elmore County 9-1-1 GIS Manager Michael Fox says the county has saved considerable resources by using the visual information system and not having to personally drive out to review new sites. The county has recently received new aerial imagery of the county and will be able to use Pictometry’s Change Analysis software, which compares the earlier imagery and the new county imagery in a single view.

The county is currently reviewing RFPs for new mapping software that will be integrated for every dispatcher’s work station. “Our next push will be deploying Pictometry to every dispatcher work station and potentially in mobile deployments once the new vendor for mapping technology is selected,” adds Moore. Configurations are anticipated to include desktop use and a touch screen software interface that can be used in first responder vehicles. The aerial imaging technology is currently used in other county municipal departments for applications in assessment, fire and law enforcement.

The oblique imaging technology enables dispatchers to view up to 12 high-resolution aerial photos taken at an angle in an almost 3D-like representation. Using Pictometry software, Elmore County public safety professionals can obtain measurements on the imagery. The combination of the detailed images and measuring tools gives users the ability to gather more information critical for improved responses. The use of this technology is helping 9-1-1 professionals across the country.

Rapid Response

Elmore County’s location in the south eastern gulf area makes it an ideal candidate for the company’s Rapid Response Program for delivering tens-of-thousands of post-hurricane imagery in days to its county customers, should the need for this level of aerial data be required for future situations.

According to Moore, by using off-the- shelf technology and available networking options, combined with other technologies in GIS and oblique aerial imaging, communities of any size can develop new systems that are cost-effective and up-to-date in their technical capabilities. These hardware and software solutions can also be crafted with an open architecture that enables them to add newer technology options as they become available.

“We’ve been able to significantly reduce our equipment and monthly expenses through the use of off-the-shelf technology and IP technology,” says Moore. “There are always unique ways, such as Pictometry’s effective approach in cost sharing through its countywide seat licensing and other ways that can help 9-1-1 systems to save their community’s resources while taking advantage of these new systems that ultimately enable them to improve services.”

Will Smith is the marketing manager for Pictometry International (Rochester, NY), a rapidly growing visual information systems company. His career spans some 20 years in marketing, public relations and sales in a variety of high-tech industries including geospatial imaging, embedded systems, e-business, consulting, audio and video broadcast technologies, software and telecommunications. He can be reached via e-mail at will.smith@pictometry.com. To read previous articles on this technology - “Adding an Aerial Advantage to Your 9-1-1 Communications Center” ( May 2005) and “Visual Referencing Software Improves Dispatcher Response” (November 2004)-visit www.enpmagazine.com.