Inside one state’s effort to digitize 911 to improve public safety
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In Arizona, officials hope next generation 911 capabilities will help improve the state’s public safety response and supplement the work of understaffed dispatcher teams.
A year into its implementation of next generation 911, Arizona officials see promising improvements for public safety responses.
The state’s Department of Administration has worked for the past several years to transition the state’s 911 system from a landline-based infrastructure to a digital one to improve system resiliency, caller location services and telecommunications capabilities between callers and dispatchers.
Arizona’s 911 team has been updating call center equipment across the state, with 73 public safety answering points undergoing modernization so far. Another seven in Maricopa County are expected to be updated by February.
Before the next generation 911, municipalities operated on different platforms through different service providers.
“We wanted to have one inoperable system through the state,” said Greg Denton, 911 program administrator for Arizona. With the new 911 model, if one call center goes down, then calls to that location are automatically rerouted to a nearby dispatch center to prevent lapses in emergency responses.
The modernized 911 system can also more accurately locate callers, said Brooke Sherpa, GIS systems manager for the Arizona Department of Administration’s 911 program. These days, for example, most smart or mobile phones can be located with modern GPS and cell tower capabilities. Callers’ locations can be pinpointed to about a 3-foot radius, she said.
“Even with this next generation technology, we want to make sure that we’re not leaving behind anybody,” Serpa said, noting that authorities must remember that many people still use older phones like landlines.
The state’s 911 program worked with service providers across Arizona to check that the address data they had based on phone bill records matched GIS data that state authorities maintained. The process gives officials the opportunity to update their own address records or suggest to service providers that they update theirs to ensure callers’ locations were accurate for dispatchers and first responders, Serpa said.
People can now also share multimedia data with 911 dispatchers, including texts, pictures and videos. Denton said that is particularly helpful for people in situations where they may be afraid of drawing attention to themselves but can still reach a call center with a text message.
Being able to send photos and videos, he added, gives dispatchers and first responders a better idea of what emergency situation they are dealing with so they can adequately prepare appropriate responses and resources.
The next generation 911 system also enables automatic callbacks, Denton said, which is useful for when dispatchers receive a call that ends up being disconnected before a responder can address it. Dispatchers don’t know whether the call was an accident or if someone is in legitimate need, so a call back is often necessary to ensure everyone’s safety.
An automated system frees up dispatchers from manually contacting the person again, which is particularly helpful for call centers that are often understaffed and under-resourced.
“They're challenged to maintain 100% staffing and usually manage staffing between 70%-85%,” Denton said, “and it takes six months to train a [public safety answering point] dispatcher … so anything that our systems can do to make their job easier and more efficient is going to be beneficial.”
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