PLANNING AN ENHANCED 911 SYSTEM
In the November 1990 issue of Fire Engineering, “Rhode Island’s Statewide Enhanced 911 System” highlighted a system that identifies a caller’s location and phone number to speed dispatch while ensuring accuracy. The article elicited a great deal of mail and phone calls from jurisdictions considering implementing their own E911 systems. Since the fire service always is involved in the planning stages of such system start-ups, it is to your advantage to understand what such a system can and cannot do; the basic terminology of E911 systems; and how such systems, likely to be in the future of most emergency service providers, can affect the work that you do.
TERMINOLOGY
Following are some common terms and features of E91 1 systems.
ANI: automatic number identification. When a call is received at an H911 public safety answering point (PSAP), it is accompanied by data identifying the number of the calling party. The data are displayed at the telecommunicator’s call-processing station.
ALE automatic location identification. ANI, used in conjunction with a data base of locations (usually developed from telephone company records augmented by input from public safety agencies within the emergency service zones covered by the system) produces AI.I In addition to having the number of the calling party (ANI) displayed at the telecommunicator’s call-processing station, you also have the location of the phone from which the call originated. )ncc location has been determined, it is relatively easy to see which police, fire, and EMS agencies are the appropriate responders for that address; these usually are displayed at the telecommunicator’s screen as well.
Selective routing. ‘This feature permits the call to he routed to the appropriate PSAP, based on the caller’s phone number. In a basic 911 system all callers in a certain exchange are routed to a PSAP, which covers the area in which the majority of those callers live. There may, however, be some telephone subscribers in the same exchange who live just over the town or county line who would, when calling 911, be routed to that same PSAP. Telecommunicators receiving such calls then would have to relay the information to the appropriate neighboring public safety agencies, losing valuable time in the process Enhanced 91 1 systems route calls by individual numbers rather than by exchanges, so the lack of co-terminality (a shared boundary) between telephone company central offices and emergency service zones is not a problem.
/breed disconnect. While many areas have passed ordinances making it illegal to program automatic dialing alarm systems to call 911 because of the nature of these systems (many are do-it-yourself installed and programmed, or their owners have moved from a jurisdiction where they were not outlawed), this practice still occurs. Many of these systems, when detecting smoke, w ater flow, or intrusion, will dial 911 and transmit an endless-tape message giving the address and type of indicator the alarm system is detecting. In addition to being somewhat annoying, these systems are dangerous, since they can tie up an emergency telephone line until the system is reset. Without the forced disconnect feature, the telecommunicator cannot get the call off the line. Consider what would happen if an earthquake, a pow er failure, or a storm precipitated a flood of automatically originated calls—it would render your receiving capacity useless.
POLITICAL PLANNING
How do you go about getting the system in your jurisdiction? Where do you begin? That depends on where you are now technically, politically, financially, and geographically. As of June 1991, only a little more than half the population of the United States and Canada had access to even a Basic 911 system, according to the National Emergency Number Association. In some areas, technical limitations of available telephone equipment make Enhanced 911 service impossible. In others, some parts of a state or county may have the technical wherewithal while other parts do not; and a regulatory or legislative authority has decided that E91 1 will be offered areawide rather than just in those jurisdictions where it is technically possible. There are still some 200,000 people in the United States who are not yet within the reach of telephone service, let alone 911 service, according to an article in the New York Times.
Assuming, however, that you are in a position to consider either converting Basic 911 to Enhanced 911 or starting an E91 1 system from the ground up, you are going to need political backing to do so. In case after case of E911 start-ups. somebody has always been available to carry the ball politically —a “point man” to see the necessary enabling legislation to fruition. Such legislation usually involves establishing a study committee, funding the operations (through bonding, telephone bill surcharges, or general revenue allotment), mandating who will be included in the system, and establishing operational standards.
At the same time, it will be helpful to have your emergency service providers sold on the merits of such a system. Jim Blesso is the administrator of the Connecticut Bureau of Statewide Emergency Telecommunications. Established in 1979, the bureau coordinates radio frequencies and provides technical assistance to public safety communications in the towns and cities in the state. One of its major tasks was to establish a statewide 911 system. Blesso describes how his bureau brought the message of E911 to emergency service providers in Connecticut:
“We started an educational campaign with a demonstration unit made available to us by AT&T. We went around the state calling together various public safety officials, town managers, first selectmen, and mayors and demonstrated what Enhanced 911 could do. They liked all the bells and whistles’ that Enhanced 911 could provide. But many of them also were acutely aware that they had some real operational problems with Basic 911 because of the mismatch of (telephone) exchange boundaries and jurisdictional boundaries. So here they had a system that was going to solve those operational problems, make 911 available to those communities who otherwise could not have it because of technical problems, and in addition it provided features that the public safety community viewed as very desirable, specifically ANI and ALL It wasn’t a difficult selling job. It w-as merely a matter of making the public safety community aware of what was available.”
You can anticipate that there will be opposition to various aspects of any E911 plan and also that you, as a fire service representative, will have some reservations as well. Among the major concerns raised by fire service officials across the country are delayed alarms and nonfire personnel answering calls.
There is no evidence available to support the notion that there are technologically based flaws in an E911 system that cause delayed alarms. Sometimes system disruptions are caused by factors not specific to E911, such as contractors digging up cables.
Then there is the concern that a widespread disaster such as a hurricane, earthquake, plane crash, or fire could generate many more calls than the system could handle. This, however, is pretty much the case regardless of the type of emergency reporting system you have in place. It is usually the case that such a catastrophe places short-term pressure on the system.
When first-responding units arrive and are visible, people generally stop calling to report the incident. There are, of course, exceptions. A high-rise fire can continue to generate smoke and calls for hours after fire attack has begun. I also have had an experience where a lady called to report a fire at which we had been operating for 45 minutes. When informed that we were on the scene, the caller said she knew that but she thought the firefighters who were there needed more help and she was calling to get it for them since the chief appeared to be quite busy.
It is generally true that about 85 percent of all 911 calls are related to law enforcement activities, according to a report presented to the Associated Public Safety Communications Officials, but that does not mean that your fire calls will necessarily be “lost” in a Hood of police calls waiting to be answered. It does mean that you need to have sufficient personnel on duty to answer incoming calls in a timely fashion and that the public must be educated regarding the use of the system. In Connecticut, Blesso notes that the statewide standard for call-receiving capacity is that one call in 100 has the potential to be blocked at peak traffic times. In Rhode Island, the operational standard is that fewer than two calls per 100 will receive a busy signal on the first try during a normal busy hour. Your local telephone company’s engineering department has busy-hour call volume tables and many formulas for determining minimum staffing for your emergency service zone.
As far as nonfire personnel answering the phones having an impact on the speed and accuracy of the communications, Connecticut’s Blesso says he’s heard those arguments before: “Police officers and firefighters, just by virtue of the fact that they are police officers and firefighters, do not automatically make good telecommunicators. You might be a hell of a firefighter at the scene of a fire, but that does not necessarily make you competent at the other end of a telephone line. You select the appropriate people for the job in the first instance and then make sure that they are trained to handle the kinds of situations that they are going to encounter. The training is the issue, and not whether or not they have a certain kind of experience.”
Blesso also notes that most of his state’s fire departments are volunteer and have long had their calls answered by paid police personnel. It should be noted that up until about 20 years ago, the major source of telephone alarms for fire was dialing “O” for Operator, meaning that most of these calls initially were answered by a nonfire person (not to mention that they were inundated with many other nonemergency calls).
The bottom line on the number and type of answering personnel is that you need to make sure that you do everything possible to convince the pow ers that be that you have enough manpower to carry out your mission. This also means making provisions to ensure that personnel know what they are doing. Training for dispatchers and telecommunicators almost always has been on the job. That practice is now widely being recognized as penny-wise and pound-foolish. If the implementation of an E911 system provides the impetus for more communications training, consider that positive fallout, for addressing that need in most jurisdictions is long overdue.
OPERATIONAL PLANNING
Once you opt for E911, the next step is operational planning. Often low profile and unglamorous, it involves both network engineering tasks for the telephone professionals and slogging through the development of a master street address guide (MSAG) for municipal and public safety officials. Experience has shown that fire departments often are the best source of local information in MSAG development. Dick Lang, chief dispatcher in the Brooklyn Central Office of the City of New York Fire Department, reports that this has been the case in New York City, where the Starfire Computer Assisted Dispatch system is in its second decade of operation. Although E911 is still in the talking stage there, it appears that fire department records will be most heavily relied on for any future MSAG.
When building your MSAG, consult your telephone company’s installation records —not its billing records—since the installation records have to do with the actual physical location of the telephone line. In some states, there is a high error rate in this data base, making your job that much more challenging as you validate each address in your zone. Other sources of MSAG data include tax assessor maps, the U.S. postal service, other utility companies’ records, county subdivision files, and records of building permits. Don’t forget to appeal directly to the people in your zone. Lieutenant Tom Jackomet of the New Berlin (WI) Police Department reports he has had good results running an ad that asks, “Does the Sears delivery man have trouble finding your house?” By emphasizing that it’s much more important for the fire department to find you, New Berlin was able to elicit help directly from people whose houses were difficult to find.
E911 and MSAG mean that the days of a house w ithout an address (“It’s a big white place w ith green shutters at the end of the road”) are gone. Also gone are the instances where a town has a “Green Street” and a “Greene Street.” In fact, even having a “Lakeview Terrace” and a “Lakeview Drive” is discouraged if not outright forbidden. When it comes to E911, duplicate street names are not possible, and similar names are best eliminated as well. This is one area where our “low profile” MSAG development activities definitely can become high profile rather quickly. Businesses on Beech Street are going to want those on Beach Street to change their stationery, and vice versa. Another excellent source for working out MSAG bugs is more experienced firefighters. Go around to firehouses and ask if anybody can remember a specific incident in which they were unable to locate a caller asking for help. Generally speaking, firefighters know their districts. It has been my experience that dispatchers, too, are walking data bases about the locations in their zones. They also usually have anecdotes about “unfindable” fires that can help you avoid making similar mistakes. Fifteen years after it happened, Chief Dispatcher Lang still remembers trying to get help to a reported car fire on “Vermont Place” in Brooklyn. The caller insisted that that was his location, and several dispatchers and firefighters thought they knew where it was, too. The only problem was that while there was a “Vermont Avenue” and a “Vermont Court,” there was no “Vermont Place.” It seems, however, that some local residents knew “Vermont Court” as “Vermont Place” —its local or unofficial name.
If you are aware of potential problems in street or house numbering, local names, and nicknames in your jurisdiction, iron them out. Number intervals, odd and even numbers, number origins, and number assignment all need to be defined. The American Society of Planning Officials, which has published bulletins on street naming and house numbering, is a good resource.
PLANNING FOR PUBLIC SAFETY ANSWERING POINTS
Determining how many PSAPs to have and how they will be configured is likely to be hammered out somewhere between the political and operational planning phases. Rhode Island has a single primary PSAG that does no dispatching whatsoever. It is a transfer operation, whereby receiving telecommunicators assess the incoming calls and transfer them to the appropriate public safety agency at more than 60 secondary PSAPs (police, fire, and/or EMS agencies throughout the state staffed by dispatchers). It is run by a state agency that is not part of the organizational structures of the police or the fire service.
Connecticut, which has 169 towns, has 110 PSAPs. All but one are located in a police station and all have at least one secondary PSAP to which they refer emergency calls. The location of primary PSAPs in police agencies, while seeming like a “turf’ issue to some in the fire service, makes sense for a lot of reasons. For one, with so many volunteer outfits in the United States, there really isn’t a workable option as to who should answer the phones. Also, FBI regulations specify that computer terminals with access to National Crime Information Center (NCIC) files should be under the supervision of a police chief. While this does not necessarily mean that PSAPs should be located in a police station, that is often the easiest means of compliance.
Having many primary PSAPs can be an expensive proposition, what with duplication of AN1/ALI equipment at each PSAP running about S50,000 for a two-position PSAP. Selective routing, while most noted for allowing resolution of co-terminality problems, also has allowed each community to boast its own single-step (receiving and dispatching) PSAP, no matter how costly. The political reality is that for many communities, “home rule” decides public safety issues. It also should be noted that Connecticut does not have any county government, which would be a likely compromise option for PSAP operations for many other states.
Money and political will undoubtedly are the determining factors here. Population size, for example, does not present any unsolvable technical problems. New York City, with an estimated daytime population in the vicinity of 10 million, has a single primary PSAP at One Police Plaza. Secondary PSAPs are in each of the five boroughs for fire and at a single citywide EMS dispatch location.
PUBLIC EDUCATION
In addition to having adequate staff to answer incoming calls, one of the ways you can help ensure that urgent calls for help do not get lost among nonemergency calls is to actively enlist the public to be part of the callprioritization process. Fire service officials in particular can be very effective in this endeavor. A burning building or a heart attack is clearly urgent. Stress to the public that if an emergency call is waiting behind a call complaining about a broken window, it could cause a deadly delay. Get people to rethink the circumstances under which they use 911. While studies show that 85 percent of calls to 911 are related to law enforcement, the distribution of emergencies among police, fire, and emergency medical services is roughly one-third each. This means that 66 percent of your emergencies are contained in 1 5 percent of your calls.
(five people alternate means —seven-digit numbers—to reach these services for nonurgent business. That way requests for permits, parking complaints, and other “quality-of-life” issues are dealt with, but not at the expense of emergencies.
After your H91 1 system is up and running, many ongoing tasks are required to guarantee its efficient operation. Address changes and new subscribers will make constant updating necessary. Connecticut processes 5,000 such updates daily, according to Blesso of the state’s Bureau of Statewide Emergency Telecommunications. Call volume also must be monitored constantly, since both engineering and staffing concerns are driven by volume.
Some future challenges for E91 1 system operators are not that far down the road. Private safety answering points for large industrial installations with their own response capacities are on the verge of becoming a reality in some areas. Personal communications systems and satellite and cellular phones all will need to be dealt with in an effective way if the public safety community is to continue to execute its mission in the face of changing technology.
