The Mission-Critical Resource Center

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On-Demand Webinar: The Top Strategic Public Safety Trends for 2019

There are several significant, disruptive technology and operations trends that Mission Critical Partners feels will set the stage for the future of public safety over the next three to five years. Public safety agencies must understand these trends, begin preparing for them now, and understand how to adjust their operations in order to adapt. They are trends that cannot afford to ignored.

On-Demand Webinar: Social Media and Emergency Response

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.

On-Demand Webinar: Data Integration: Moving Beyond 512 Characters of Legacy Data

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.

New EOC Facility Improves PEMA’S Operational and Administrative Capabilities

In Summary:

  • A Pennsylvania statewide EOC agency suffered from a lack of space at an aging facility that prevented them to introduce new technology and replace antiquated systems.

  • MCP and its partner, SCHRADERGROUP, worked together to help PEMA build a new state-of-the-art facility and ancillary building that opened in July 2016.

  • The new facility is considered a crown jewel that dramatically enhances PEMA's operational and administrative capabilities


Overview and Agency Challenge

An Emergency Operations Center (EOC) facility located in Harrisburg, PA is home to the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA), a cabinet-level agency that is tasked with coordinating prevention, preparedness, response and recovery activities related to natural and man-made emergencies in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Lack of space and age prevented them from serving the needs of a statewide EOC and limited their ability to introduce new technology and replace aging systems.

On-Demand Webinar: Navigating the Public Safety Technology Upgrade Process

With all of the computer-aided dispatch (CAD) systems and models available in today's market, how do you determine which solution will work best for your agency now, while also scaling to meet your future needs?

On-Demand Webinar: Making the Case for 5G in Public Safety Communications

Fifth-generation (5G) wireless communications has the ability to accommodate the fast-growing demand for bandwidth required for the delivery of multimedia content, including video, images and social media, to PSAPs. During this webinar, MCP subject-matter experts discusses how 5G can help improve emergency response and what it means for communities and public safety organizations alike.

Discussion topics during this session include:
  • Why 5G is critical to evolving emergency response
  • The types of platforms and data 5G will support
  • How implementation of 5G will impact municipalities
  • Steps you can take to prepare your public safety organization

On-demand webinar length: 45 minutes 

Next Generation 911: A New World for PSAP Network Maintenance

 In Summary:

  • Next Generation 911 will improve emergency response dramatically, but will bring challenges that require new approaches and skill sets.

  • Network and systems management will become considerably more complicated after an NG911 system has been implemented.

  • Many PSAPs lack the IT expertise to adequately monitor and protect and NG911 system.


911 Operations: How Next Generation 911 and FirstNet Will Impact PSAPs

In Summary:

  • Together, Next Generation 911 and the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network will enhance the role of PSAPs exponentially.

  • While exciting, this also creates uncertainty as these new networks collectively will unlease a torrent of information and data that must be processed.

  • PSAPs will need to undergo profound operational and policy changes.


The NPSBN and NG911 will generate new forms of data communications that will enable telecommunicators to make better-informed decisions when dispatching first responders. This whitepaper discusses the profound operational changes that 911 centers will need to make in order to take advantage of the new capabilities.
 
Because the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN) and Next Generation 911 (NG911) are both Internet Protocol-based, broadband-enabled platforms, they will generate new forms of data communications that will flow into PSAPs and improve situational awareness dramatically. However, telecommunicator jobs are already stressful. These stresses will rise quickly if PSAPs are not well-positioned to handle the enormous amounts of data that will be available in the future. Instead, PSAPs need to make a number of major operational changes. This whitepaper discusses those operational changes, which include:
  • Data-analytics systems
  • Data storage
  • Modern, state-of-the-art communications systems
  • Bolstered telecommunicator support programs
  • Enhanced workplace training

MCP Lends Expertise to Implement and Manage Automatic License Plate Reader System in Southeastern PA

Automatic License Plate Reader System Plays a Key Role in Criminal Investigations Across the Region, Making it a Safer Place

In Summary:

  • The Southeastern Pennsylvania Regional Task Force (SEPARTF)–which serves the Greater Philadelphia metropolitan region–received a UASI grant to implement an automatic license plate reader (ALPR) system that would support public safety agencies throughout the region. They needed an expert partner to turn their ALPR vision into a reality and maximize their ALPR system investment.

  • MCP acted as a program manager for the initiative and led deployment efforts for 130 ALPR tag-reading units throughout the region.

  • More than 41 million tags are scanned annually, and numerous examples of how the PALPRN has played a role positively impacting key criminal investigations across the region.


 

Overview and Agency Challenge

In 2014, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Regional Task Force (SEPARTF)—which serves the Greater Philadelphia metropolitan region—received a UASI grant to implement an automatic license plate reader (ALPR) system that would support public safety agencies throughout the region. These systems typically cost upwards of $16K to procure, and install, per vehicle. And, to make an automatic license plate reader system successful, a number of ancillary factors must be consider including

  • implementing servers, and securing and maintaining massive amounts of data
  • data integration and analysis from numerous hotlists
  • training of first responders and 911 telecommunicators on how to leverage the technology.

SEPARTF knew that in order to take advantage of the enormous upside offered by an ALPR system, they needed an expert partner to turn their vision into their reality and maximize the return on their automatic license plate system investment.

Infographic: Next Generation 911 Technology Adoption Lifecycle

In 1962, Everett M. Rogers, an assistant professor of rural sociology at Ohio State University, published a theory he described as the "diffusion of innovations" in a book of the same name. Rogers, who later in his career became a distinguished professor emeritus in the communications and journalism department at the University of New Mexico, developed the theory to describe how innovation adoption plays out in any given social group. Rogers broke the theory down to five distinct categories: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.