June 11-15 DISPATCH Monthly Magazine Preview Monday Tuesday Wednesday VECC Photo Album NENA's Photo Album If anyone call tell use where the "Goat Bar" is, we need to go back and look for our wallet. SCC's "911 Timeline" display included an actual Iridium phone! You know, the one that represents the future -- but which is useless now that the company has gone bankrupt. We hate to tag SCC, but the SLC-FD comm center replaced their old CAD with the SCC product some years back -- but found it unusable, according to one dispatcher. They fire department canned the software and went back to their old system, until their more recent switch to FDM Software's product. In the seminar on the Mayday Initiative, a skeptical attendee asked Bob Miller if he had ever had occasion to use OnStar or a similar service. In fact, Miller said, he used the service just two weeks prior to summon the police, and the service worked perfectly, he told the audience! We checked NENA's 1999 PSAP salary survey, and found that a Dispatcher I makes an average pay of $13.85 an hour, while a Dispatcher II makes $16.13 -- both perform calltaking and radio dispatch. Now public safety software companies have code names for their products -- White Buffalo was a recent one. The SLC police and fire comm centers handed out very fancy, full-color, 4-page brochures that showed their centers -- with prominent logos of the suppliers: PEI, U S WEST, Versaterm Inc., Infra-Structures, Inc. and Dictaphone. On the way back from SLC Police and Fire, the cellular phone rang in the pocket of one of their supervisors -- it was so typical: a dispatcher who needed a day off. The supervisor's response? You know, find someone to trade with, post it to see if anyone wants to work overtime, otherwise, sorry.

Full Day of Seminars, Tours Day Begins At 8 a.m. With Seminars Site Tours of SLC, VECC and Salt Lake Center Vendors Have Full Day With Prospective Customers It was a busy day for NENA attendees, and it started early. Many members were coming off Monday night parties and very little sleep, which didn't show until dark, afternoon sessions, where you could see heads nodding off. Such is any conference. Today was the fullest day of seminars, company exhibits and comm center tours---there were over 55 sessions throughout the day, six tours of three comm centers and an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. trade show. Today was also designated as "Radio Day" by NENA, and the Big 3 radio manufacturers--Motorola, EF Johnson and Com-Net Ericsson--held information sessions on their products. We headed to the 8 a.m. session on the National Mayday Readiness Initiative, co-sponsored by the ComCare Alliance and the U.S. Department of Transportation, and funded with a grant from General Motors. Panel members Ken Keim (Oregon 911), Bob Miller (NENA Technical Issues chief), Jack Haviland (manager of Safety Strategy Integration for GM), and David Aylward (ComCare executive director). The panelists explained the Initiative is focusing on all the issues related to telematics, including automatic crash notification systems. They said the committee is just cranking up and has no answers at this point. They were very solicitous of input and participation from NENA members on issues already identified, and for new issues they haven't anticipated. Keim said the intent of the Initiative is to make the transition to the new wireless reporting system as smooth as possible for both the commercial providers and PSAPs. In statements eerily similar to those made about wireless 911, the panelists said that the spread of telematics devices will only increase (now 300,000 and up to 5 million customers within 2-3 years) and that PSAPs will ultimately have to begin learning how to take information from OnStar (and up to 16 others now actively marketing devices and more in the future) about vehicle incidents. Aylward explained the benefits of ACN systems: immediate notification of accidents, real-time information transfer, the private sector absorbs the costs, a private call center screens the calls for forwarding to the PSAP, and the future possibility of advanced crash severity prediction. He said OnStar now has call centers in Detroit, Charlotte (NC), and ATX has a call center in Irving (Tex.). Aylward said the Initiative has five issue committees what will meet four times each to pursue their tasks. The first committee is focused on training and protocols on both sides of the ACN events. Like the other committees, Aylward said, the committee will also be studying the cost impact of the solutions they devise. The second committee is focused on emergency information and operations. They'll study databases, operations and access to 911. He said they will hopefully come up with standardized methods of handling calls, especially now that at least three new companies are entering the market and will have call centers (LoJack, Chapman Industries and Cross Country). The third committee is looking at incident management and law enforcement issues, including the definition of an emergency and non-emergency incident, when to "turn off" a car that's being pursued by the police, post accident investigations using ACN data and more. Miller said this category includes, "a lot of things we haven't even thought about." The fourth committee will study the consumer business practices of the ACN companies, including advertising ethics and accuracy, consumer expectations, compliance with standards, privacy and wireless coverage (or lack of it). The fifth committee will study sophisticated uses of ACN data, including injury prediction for EMS and hospitals. Aylward asked anyone with ideas or who wants to participate to contact Jeff Hannah at the ComCare Alliance, email: jhannah@comcare.org. Watch the Tornado Just east of the downtown Salt Lake area is a 9-story building that looks like it was built in the last 1970s -- right across from the violin maker school. It's the headquarters of the SLC Police Department, and also houses the fire department's fire prevention bureau on the ground floor. Through the lobby (with plaques for the officers who died in the line of duty), and up the elevator to the fifth floor are the separate but close-by comm centers of the police and fire department. They handed out very nice, full-color, glossy brochures describing the comm center and its operations--sponsored by Plant Equipment Inc., U S WEST (now Quest), Versaterm Inc., Dictaphone and Infra-Structures Inc. [front] [inside] The first thing that strikes you is the presence of windows--both for good and ill.The windows certainly do allow a view of the city, and let you know if it's night or day. On the other hand, there is always glare, either directly from the windows or indirectly off the computer screens. During the tornado, the windows allowed dispatchers to rush to see if they could see the twister---and then run back to answer the 911 calls! In the hallway outside on the wall are photos of all the dispatchers--there are 8 empty frames out of 48 authorized dispatchers (along with 7 supervisors and 1 MSAG administration person). They're training four new dispatchers right now. Just inside the main doorway is another set of frames and plaques, but this time they're awards and citations that the center and its dispatchers have received. In the break room,we saw one of two uniforms the police dispatchers wear--either polo shirt with embroidered logo or a full, light-blue shirt with patch and badge. The police and fire departments moved into the center and consolidated all the previously separate positions in 1988, but 8 years later they split the two agencies and put them across the hall from each other. Now, the police have from one to three radio dispatchers at a time (they patch channels together other times, and have a two others and supervisor's console available for extraordinary events). On the fire side, the have 3 console for normal operations, a supervisor's room and training room set-up for extraordinary events. The police side has 8 call-taking consoles in a separate room separated by windows, and grouped into two pods of four consoles each. The call-taking positions were just recently converted to ergo-compliant models from Infra-Structures, Inc. in New Jersey. Dispatchers receive six weeks of classroom training, and then are assigned an FTO. Probation is one year--the time necessary to learn both call-taking and radio dispatching (most dispatchers rotate between the two tasks during their shift). Both police and fire dispatchers are EMD certified, since the police dispatchers may be called upon to completely handle an EMS call if the fire side is very busy. They use the Medical Priority Consultants EMD program--after all, it was "invented" at SLC by Dr. Jeff Clawson. The center handles about 150,000 residents within 120 square miles, and fields 261,000 incidents a year on the police side, and 28,919 on the fire side. On the police side, there are three consoles facing windows--that open![close-up] [long-shot] Each console consists of four screens, a radio recorder and a keyboard switch. [close-up] There are two other consoles facing away from the windows, and a supervisors' console adjacent to the door to the call-takers' room. To one side of a radio console is--the snack bar! The telephone system is operated by VESTA software from Plant Equipment Inc., and there is a tangle of wires behind each console--we've seen this at other comm centers, too. In the next room, the call-takers have 8 positions grouped into two pods. [#2 pod] Each position has individual, incandescent lighting that's very easy on the eyes. From the call-takers' room, you can see through a window into the radio dispatch area. The supervisors' room is adjacent to the call-takers' room, but also has a door out onto the radio dispatch area. Across the hall, and down a short hallway, is the very small--but not cramped--fire comm center. There are two consoles facing the windows and one facing away. [console #1, #3] The supervisor's office is at one end of the room, and it has a dispatch set-up, too. A training room is on one side of the center, and it has a fourth CAD set-up. By the way, the use CAD developed by the Canadian company FDM Software, who originally started with a fire records system, and built it up into a very clean-looking, Windows-based program that is very configurable, both for the agency (data fields, labels, eta.) and the dispatcher (status screens, etc.). The software is very tightly integrated with the records side of the program, and allows dispatchers to view information collected during inspections, prior incidents, etc. They dispatch units by radio paging, using a new Zetron console. By the way, SLC-FD has 14 stations, each with an engine, 3 truck companies, six rescue engines and several "light tenders" that accompany engines on EMS incidents. They have a complex, but perfectly reasonable, system of prioritizing incidents using the MPDS cards that result in both hot and cold responses, with either an ambulance only (cold), EMT engine (cold), or a combination of BLS and ALS engines and an ambulance (hot or cold). Both police and fire just converted to an 800 MHz trunked radio system. On the fire side, some EMS units still don't have the 800 MHz gear, so they've patched the old 154 MHz channels to the trunked system for the time being. On the same side as the fire comm center is a break room and tape room. On the supervisor's door was a sheet showing the pay rates for dispatchers--from $22,680 a year to $36,300. The VoIP Challenge Voice over the Internet (VoIP) may take the same evolutionary--and rapidly-moving--path that wireless 911 has taken, according to information from a presentation by Eric Sorensen from SCC. He explained how the Internet Protocol (IP) data transmission method was developed, originally for data, but more and more for other types of information, including voice. Now, Sorensen said, there are many large companies using VoIP for fixed, point-to-point transmission of voice, usually from one headquarters to another, or to link branch offices. These systems infrequently present problems, because they calls they carry are simply from one inside phone to another--they don't have a gateway to the public switched telephone network. Yet, some system do interface with switch phone systems, and more of these gateways will appear in the coming years. The crux of the problem, Sorensen explained, is that VoIP is transmitted as packets over a data network (public Internet or private network), without any data identifying the location of the originating IP device (phone, computer, ??). This means that if a caller did dial 911, it could be routed off the IP network at some greatly distant point (even around the world), and land in a dispatcher's lap without and ANI/ALI information. In fact, Sorensen said, he knows a Nortel Networks employee who did just that--dialed 911 from Washington state and had his 911 call answered somewhere in Maryland, where the companies IP network voice gateway is located. He said that FCC action on the issue is possible, but it would most likely focus on requirements for voice gateways and the point where they interface with the PSTN. The Internet, he said, seems to be off-limits for any type of regulation for the moment, FCC or otherwise. Sorensen said NENA's Technical Committee is working on the issue of VoIP, and that the related Internet standards committees are open to education and input from public safety. "We just need to get involved," he concluded. In response to a question from the audience, Sorensen said it's quite possible that some day PSAPs may be linked up to 911 tandems or other phone systems via IP. He said that transmission method would be especially useful for sending advanced data. What Time According to Angelo Salvucci, M.D., accurate time is very important for handling medical incidents. He's the medical director in Ventura County (Calif.), and gave a presentation that featured Spectracom time standard products. He noted that in an EMS system, a common time standard is critical for determining response times, treatment times, and transport times, and includes not only the comm center, but all of the other agencies that respond or participate (hospitals). He also advocated establishing standards for collecting the data, such as when timestamps are made (on arrival or upon patient treatment?), and providing feedback to the data collectors on accuracy. 911 Timeline We heard about it earlier, but didn't visit SCC's History of 911 until today. It's a "no selling" zone that documents the way 911 has evolved from before it actually started, and on into the future. It showed what actually occurred in certain years, displayed artifacts from the era, and also plugged a few SCC accomplishments. Tomorrow: Site visit to Valley Emergency Communications Center.