In 2018, Charleston County Consolidated 911 Center, Mission Critical Partners, RapidSOS, and RapidDeploy led a pilot project completed in September that tested the use of social media data in emergency response along with collaborators from the Penn State University.
According to the National Emergency Number Association (NENA), Americans make an average of 240 million 911 calls annually. Today, public safety answering points (PSAPs) around the country are faced with the challenge of finding and retaining the right staff to answer those calls. This is a critical imperative because when a 911 call goes unanswered, the results can be devastating. What steps can PSAP leaders take to begin overcoming their staffing challenges today while preparing for tomorrow?
Topics: Consulting, Workforce Optimization, Infographics
Next Generation 911 and public safety broadband are opening up new opportunities for consuming and sharing data in public safety—a situation previously unimaginable in this industry. Today, we're seeing several disruptive technologies penetrate the market such as device-based hybrid location (e.g. iOS12), connected car data (Uber), and social media. Home IoT, wearables and smart city sensors are on the horizon.
Butler County, PA's existing public safety land mobile radio system was facing end-of-life and had begun to experience reduced reliability.
They County worked with MCP to develop a road-map that would replace the system with one that would meet their future needs.
MCP provided a detailed assessment and implementation support and eventually, helped Butler County realize 43 percent cost-savings and long-term maintenance savings.
"MCP has played a key role in helping us meet our project goals by managing multiple vendors on our behalf—holding them accountable for meeting project milestones, managing project risks and ensuring that they meet schedule deadlines and requirements."
Steve Bicehouse, director, Butler County, Butler County
Critical data is springing up everywhere. This quick read discusses the ten most important elements about data integration every public safety agency should know, ranging from precise location information, smart and safe cities, social media data usage in the PSAP, data sources, supplemental data, as well as GIS data management.
This whitepaper examines push-to-talk over celluar and mission-critical push-to-talk technology, explaining why they may be a better choice than LMR in some cases, and how they provide significantly more flexibility regarding application, device and network choices. The biggest benefit of MCPTT service is that it replicates the PTT functionality of traditional LMR systems on devices that are smaller, lighter and much less expensive than portable radios traditionally carried by first responders. Also examined are important factors to consider when deciding whether to implement the technology.
"With MCP's help, we've identified the issues and challenges that stand between us and a successful regionalization effort. Now that we know it could work for us, we need to determine how to make it a reality and execute on that plan."
Mark Schmidt, Emergency Communications Project Coordinator, Imperial County Communication Authority, Imperial County, California
Imperial Valley, California, is served by four public safety answering points (PSAPs) that provide call-taking and dispatching services for the Imperial Valley. The Imperial Valley Communications Authority (IVECA), in conjunction with the San Diego County Regional Communications System , provides public safety voice and data communications to more than 200 local, state and federal agencies in San Diego and Imperial counties.
The County’s PSAPs were already sharing technology resources, but wanted to figure out if sharing services also made sense in terms of staffing and maintenance costs.
Over the next 5-10 years, FirstNet will deploy the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN). As a parallel process, emergency services IP networks will be built to provide interconnectivity between PSAPs to allow for deployment and utilization of Next Generation 911 (NG911) technologies by PSAPs across the nation. In this session, MCP examines the major issues involved with the transition to this new platform for public safety communications and provide a glimpse into what the emergency communications environment could look like in the next 10-20 years.
Many public safety communications officials are wondering if they should replace their land mobile radio (LMR) system now that FirstNet has become a reality. This whitepaper makes the case for why agencies shouldn’t abandon their plans to replace their LMR system.
Now that the public safety sector is contemplating the implementation of an IP-based network known as the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN). Although this network was intended from the beginning to ramp up the public safety’s data capabilities in the field, a question was raised whether the NPSBN someday will replace the land mobile radio (LMR) systems that traditionally have provided mission-critical voice service.
The NPSBN eventually could one day satisfy all of public safety’s voice and data needs—the big question is when. Many public safety agencies have legacy LMR systems that are approaching end of life today, raising the question if they should burn up already limited financial resources on an LMR system that could obsolete in a few years. MCP recommends that public safety agencies not abandon the replacement of the LMR system for several reasons:
This on-demand webinar explores the concept of radio interoperability, which is an essential and fundamental component of effective first responder communications. Topics of discussion include interoperability tools and methods, technologies available on the market today, as well as what agencies should should consider when improving interoperability. Also discussed is how interoperability doesn't stop with technology, and the role that operations, training and planning plays in achieving true interoperability.
In this webinar we discuss:
Next Generation 911 (NG911) represents a significant leap forward for the emergency response sector primarily because it will deliver dramatically improved situational awareness to telecommunicators and field personnel. But the transition from legacy technology to NG911 is a difficult undertaking, especially when states try to go it alone. NG911 will require that state 911 authorities establish an effective leadership structure and then develop a comprehensive strategic plan to execute the migration.
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