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Palm Beach County Enhanced 9-1-1 System Prepares for the Future
Posted by : pbc.madler on Thursday, October 16, 2008 - 09:13 PM
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On December 15th, 1981, Palm Beach County put only the second Enhanced 9-1-1 System in Florida into service. Calls to 9-1-1 were routed to the correct Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) with the telephone number of the caller's phone and location. 27 years later, times have changed. The majority of 9-1-1 calls come from wireless telephones, although we have been able to provide the wireless caller's telephone number and location, new technologies are not able to access the 9-1-1 system such as text messaging utilized by the deaf community and many young people, internet chat, video, pictures and automatic crash notification information from vehicles.
Palm Beach County has taken steps to implement a 9-1-1 network that will be the foundation for a system that is able to handle these technologies by obtaining $7m in grant funding from the Florida E 9-1-1 Board for an $11m E 9-1-1 System. Organizations such as the National Emergency Number Association (NENA), the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officers (APCO) are developing operational and technical standards for Next Generation 9-1-1 systems capable of processing these new technologies The proposed Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) network will be the foundation of such a system. As upgrades become available to handle text, video, pictures, and data, the new system will be the appropriate platform to begin routing calls to the appropriate PSAP, providing a method of reestablishing communication if it is lost prematurely and displaying the location of the caller so that emergency personnel can respond to the caller even if the caller cannot provide their location.
This new system will also allow Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) within Palm Beach County to transfer calls outside the county to the appropriate PSAP with the caller's information. Instead of being distributed throughout the County at each of the PSAPs, the system will consist of a few hosts with only the answering positions at the PSAPs. The location of the hosts will be in hardened buildings will mean that the answering positions can be relocated to anywhere the positions can connect to the host if the PSAP is in danger or damaged.
Palm Beach County is moving forward to keep up with your emergency communications needs.
One person had some questions after reading this article. I have included them with my responses below.
Is that a $7 million grant? The Florida E 9-1-1 Board is contributing $7 million to what will be an $11 million project.
Palm Beach County has already set aside the other $4 million and the grant funds have been received from the 9-1-1Borad.
What Is this the main point of the article? That Palm Beach County has received funding to implement a new 9-1-1 system that will enable text messaging and other communication technologies to contact 9-1-1 directly with enhanced 9-1-1 features.
What exactly will the funds be used for? The funds will be used to acquire a separate internet protocol (IP) network (the same technology as is used by the internet) to connect all of the PSAPs, call handling equipment and software to route, answer, and transfer 9-1-1 calls
When was the grant obtained? The Grant was submitted in January of 2008.
When was the grant was awarded? At the February 18th & 19th meeting of the Florida e 9-1-1 Board.
The article contains a lot of terms that I don’t think the average reader knows about. Could you please explain the following:
What is Enhanced 9-1-1 System? Three basic requirements of an enhanced 9-1-1 system are 1) automatic routing of 9-1-1 call to the agency that dispatches emergency response for the location of the phone(selective routing), 2) the display of the caller’s telephone number at that agency (Automatic telephone Number Identification ANI) and 3) the display of the caller’s location (Automated Location Information ALI).
What are PSAPs? Public Safety Answering Point or the location that receives the 9-1-1 call.
What is the Florida E 9-1-1 Board? Initially the Florida Wireless Board was formed to collect and distribute fees collected from the wireless telephone subscribers for 9-1-1. In order to collect fees from VoIP telephone providers new legislation was enacted to make the board responsible for wireless and non-wireless fees and was renamed the Florida E(nhanced) 9-1-1 Board. It is chaired by a representative of the State of Florida and its members are 9-1-1 Coordinators from small, medium and large counties and representatives from both wireless and non-wireless telephone providers.
What is Next Generation 9-1-1? This is still being defined but its goal is to enable the 9-1-1 telephone system to route 9-1-1 calls to the appropriate agency, display the caller’s call-back number or some method of reestablishing communication, and provide the caller’s location from devices that cannot currently communicate with 9-1-1. Instant messaging devices such as ”Blackberries” cannot communicate with the current 9-1-1 system in a text mode often used by the hearing impaired community. An Internet Protocol network will be required to accomplish this as well as enable PSAPs to receive other data such as automated automobile crash information from vehicles and other data resources.
What do you mean “proposed” Voice over Internet Protocol network? Since the actual system is not in place at this point I used the term proposed to show that the network etc. is yet future. The new system will eventually replace the current 9-1-1 system or be a back-up for it.
What do you mean by “processing” in this phrase: “systems capable of processing these new technologies.” “Processing calls to 9-1-1 from these new technologies” would probably be a better way to put it. This “processing” would be the features of enhanced 9-1-1; routing 9-1-1 calls, providing a method of reestablishing the communication, and identifying the caller’s location.
More information about 9-1-1 is available at our website; www.pbc9-1-1.org and the National Emergency Number Association’s (NENA) website; www.nena.org. Information about the Florida E 9-1-1 Board and the legislation that created it is available at their website; http://dms.myflorida.com/cits/public_safety/florida_e911.
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