Overheard: It's all happening behind the scenes. It'll just take time...

During Ronald Miller's (FEMA) address, he stated that 50,000 calls are made to 911 each day. He also noted that many citizens spend more on their daily Starbucks than on 911.

It was tough to watch, but during the Sept. 11th memorial video, NENA left "in" a clip of airplane #2 flying into the WTC tower.

Was it OnStar's telematics service that attracted people to their booth? Or was it simply the opportunity to sit in an Escalade that packed the booth?

We don't argue (much) with the sentiment, but how about the grammar? A group of company's had a joint booth with the banner, "Telematics Helps Save Lives." In a presentation at the booth, a slide used the singular, "Telematics Help Save Lives." So, which is correct?

We saw just one company who adopted a "Homeland Security" approach to marketing their products: PTS Solutions. Their software just looks like CAD, fire and LE records management and jail booking. There's doesn't seem to be a homeland connection.

2002 Annual Conference
National Emergency Number Association (NENA)

Monday - Opening Session & Trade Show

The opening session featured a number of tributes to the firefighters and law enforcement officers who died at the World Trade Center, and the passengers aboard Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania.

Perennial favorite Randy Snider sang the Canadian and American National Anthems, "God Bless America," and a closing patriotric number. The NENA choir came on-stage to accompany him. A color guard of NENA members from Pennsylvania, New York and Virginia followed a lone bag-piper down the aisle and on-stage, and stood at attention while on the two giant screens scrolled the names of all the public safety personnel who died at the World Trade Center. NENA president Sharon Counterman even asked for a moment of silence for those who died, and then introduced a two-minue video that saluted those who gave their lives.

Counterman also announced that NENA had begun an annual "September 11th Memorial Telecommunicators Award," that was given this year to the comm centers who handled the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks. She said that the first of the awards was handed out last month during the Pennsylvania state chapter meeting, and honored the Somerset County Emergency Services agency, the Westmoreland County 911 center, the Allegheny County 911 center. Interestingly, in the latter case, they fielded a call at 7:38 p.m. the day of the attacks, from a woman whose husband had called her on a wireless phone to say he was trapped in the World Trade Center with three firefighters. Unable to make phone contact locally for help, the man dialed his wife, and she dialed 911. Even more interestingly, the Allegheny County dispatchers couldn't reach anyone at NYPD by phone, so they fax'd the plea for help to the police, with the notation, "This is not a hoax. Please don't throw this away." Within 15 minutes they received a callback from NYPD, and the trapped people eventually rescued.

By the way, Westmoreland County had just dedicated a new comm center, and took that frightening telephone call directly from Flight 93. In July NENA officials travel to New York City to hand out the award to that's city's dispatchers.

Counterman also recounted a fund-raising effort in Johnson County (Kan.) that was started by dispatcher Joe Crooks (left in photo), and aided firefighters from around the Kansas City (Kan.) area. Within just days the street-corner pitch netted over $60,000. Eventually, the program raised $334,000, which was given to NENA's Emergency Services Relief Fund. In all, NENA raised $392,000 through the program. NENA had a booth on exhibit floor to continue the fund-raising effort. [click photo]

Counterman then brought on-stage Crooks, operations manager Butch Richardson and comm center manager Lisa Durand to present them with an award.

Counterman introduced Ronald Miller, a former private sector information technology director who was appointed to that position at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in June 2001.

Miller presented a 45-minute talk on the role of information technology and FEMA, emphasizing that he wanted to learn more about the grass roots needs of local public safety agencies.

After the opening general session, NENA members headed downstairs to the exhibit hall to browse the 113 booths.

After lunch, the first of the 112 educational sessions began.

Where's the Pizazz?

Quite simply, there's really nothing new in 911 communications-- no new hardware to stroke or software to run. But that didn't mean we couldn't find anything worth writing about.

Perhaps the most interesting booth was one jointly sponsored by the Greater Harris County, Ford Motor Corp., Intrado, Cross Country, SBC Communications Inc. and Veridian to demonstrate the practicality of directly linking automatic crash notification (ACN) to calls centers, and the call centers directly to a region's 911 switch.

In this case, Greater Harris County agreed to fund $1.5 million and to become a testbed for the system. John Melcher, deputy director of GHC and who readily admits to being on the "bleeding edge" of technology, notes that all the components of this system were off-the-shelf, and a much simpler solution they initially imagined. With the financial assistance of Ford, GHC installed black boxes in 500 of the region's law enforcement vehicles, hooked up to crash sensors at one end, and the Cross County Automotive Center at the other, with the intent on immediate reporting of vehicle accidents.

Upon impact, the black box will generate a wireless phone call to the Cross Country call center, where a speaker-phone connection is made with the car's occupants. The call is then transferred to the closest PSAP based on latitude-longitude data provided with the call and matched to Intrado's database. When the PSAP calltaker answers the calling in greater Harris County, the vehicle's location is displayed, as well as a wealth of other information: the make and color of the vehicle, the number of occupants and if they were wearing seatbelts, the severity of impact, the orientation of the car (rollover?), and the direction of impact.

What makes this project most interesting is that it uses no special gear, wireless link or 911 delivery method. All the pieces previously existed, but had never been tied together into a working system.

Of special note is that the call transfer from Cross County to the PSAP is made directly into the 911 digital tandem, and so arrives at the calltaker's console just like any other 911 call: with priority handling and with ANI/ALI+ information. Melcher said this feature was simple to implement, by simply programming one of the 911 switch's ports to accept direct-inward dialing (DID), and then programming the Cross Country gear to use that number when transferring the call over the pubic switched telephone network. There is considerable coding behind all this to allow the call to be routed to the appropriate switch. But the process of getting the call from the vehicle directly to a 911 PSAP turns out to be very simple.

By the way, the first ACN incident came early yesterday (Sunday), when an officer in pursuit of a suspect was rammed by the suspect, activating the ACN gear and sending a call to the Cross Country call center. Melcher said that as the officer continued the pursuit, he suddenly heard the voice of a call center operator on the speakerphone asking if he had an emergency. The officer reportedly replied, "I can't talk right now...." Melcher sent trainers to Cross Country's Boston call center to work out operational details, but admitted that a continuing pursuit was one circumstance they hadn't anticipated.

Melcher said his agency will develop a White Paper they will donate to NENA covering the operational and technical experience they gather. It will hopefully assist future agencies who want to implement a similar system.

During the live demonstration, an officer pushed a button in a patrol car on the exhibit floor, and over speakers you could hear the Cross County call center operator answer the call, talk to the officer directly, and then transfer the call to the Houston Police Dept. calltaker. The test call was handled very routinely and was definitely an excellent example of all the pieces being put together

Training Simulators

Twenty First Century Communications (TFCC) promoted their "Sentinel" Crisis Communications service, which offers both outbound and inbound community alerting an information services. TFCC has been offering call center services to corporate clients for many years, primarily in the utility industry. Now they're offering some of that infrastructure to the public safety market. The service is entirely Web-based and uses interactive voice response and recordings to make and receive calls. You simply log on to a designated secure Web site, bring up your agency's map, and define the geographic area to call. You then either designate one of your pre-recorded messages to send, or call in with a new recording. You can also pre-designate a list of phone numbers, or upload a list of phones to dial. The Sentinel service then uses any of TFCC's 3,000 available phone lines around the country to call the designated phone lines. On the in-bound side, TFCC can provide you with a toll-free number to provide the public, which will reach a recording that you call in. Their system has a 30,000 line capacity, and can provide reports on the caller's location and number of calls handled. You have no upfront purchase costs, no worries about computer maintenance or power outages, and their system has much more capacity than you could pay for. Phone (800) 382-8356.

Sanders Audio-Visual showed their impressive line-up of computer-based training simulators for 911, CAD and radio systems, what they call a Virtual Communication Center. The software is based on actual programs, and display all the on-screen buttons, status displays and other features of real programs. However, they don't interface with real external links and are much easier to set up and administer by a trainer. The 911 simulator includes 10 lines, buttons for answer, hold, release and wink, an adjustable ringer volume, a scenario recorder and a TDD screen. The radio portion include 30 channels, channel simul and mute features, unselect audio, a scenario recorder, alert tone, footswitch jack and a 24-hour clock. The CAD training simulator includes ANI/ALI display, customizable unit IDs and incident types, and full interaction between the instructor's terminal and up to 30 student terminals. Oh, Sanders also makes old-fashioned mechanical simulators for phones and radio, but why...?

Speaking of training simulators, Creative Controls Inc. markets easily-transported devices for youth education programs and entry-level dispatchers. The former features a phone for the child to answer, and an instructor's control device that allows you to play pre-recorded, standard responses from a distance. You can also wear a headset to interact directly with the child. The dispatcher simulator features two briefcase-enclosed units, and allows full telephone and radio interaction between trainer and trainee. The phone connection features two lines, hold and a special call-back feature-- if the student misdials calling a person back, the call is redirected. All the voice transmissions can be recorded and, with the optional video camera on the student's console, video can be recorded as well. The units are $1,950 and $4,200 respectively. Surf: www.creativecontrols.com.

Air Technology was promoting their line of air purifiers that fit into a recessed ceiling, operate on regular 115 volts, and offers up to 1,000 cfm air movement to filter up to 99.7% of contaminants. It uses a three-stage filter system that remove sub-micron particles and a charcoal filter to remove unwanted gases. Filters need changing only every 4-6 months (primary filter) and 1-2 years (second and third filters). The units can be equipped with optional ultraviolet lights to provide bacteria and virus protection. Surf: www.pureair.com.

Boy, does the wireless industry move fast! Wingcast, the joint Ford-Qualcomm telematics venture that folded just last week, was listed on a giant poster outside the opening session as sponsor of the "musical production." Wingcast was also slated to occupy booth #847, but instead there was just an empty spot.

A new twist on an old product was demonstrated at the Tiburon booth by Pictometry. The company provides aerial photographs of most areas of the country. So what? The company provides not only so-called orthogonal (straight-down) photos, but also a series of oblique photos that can provide multiple unique views of an area. The company's library includes medium and close-up oblique views, which are referenced to standard maps, which allows you to perform distance and height calculations on anything in the photos. You can use the photos for pre-planning high-risk warrant services, fire protection or other special situations. Surf: www.pictometry.com.

By the way, if you operate a 911 center and aren't familiar with VFIS, you should investigate their insurance services. The offer property, automobile and general liability coverage for dispatchers and managers, and an "umbrella" liability plan for up to $10 million. The company consulting division, Emergency Services Education & Consulting Group (ESECG) also performs consolidation studies for comm centers, including assessments of the operation, service demand and risk management. Surf: www.esecg.com.

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