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Contact NICE: Customer hotline: (888) 217-0593 Customer support: (800) 642-3611 (800) NICE 611 email: Welcome@nice.com On the web: www.nice.com |
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NICE Systems, Inc. 950 Herndon Parkway Suite 250 Herndon, VA 20170 |
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| NEW RECORDING TECHNOLOGY PROMISES ROI FOR 9-1-1 CENTERS |
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ROI (return on investment) used to be a buzzword reserved for corporate executive row. Now it's finding its way into the 9-1-1 lexicon. Public safety decision-makers are carefully scrutinizing every investment - including recording technology. But when they talk ROI, they're not just speaking dollars and cents. They're looking to recording technology to improve emergency response, enhance productivity, provide better customer service, mitigate risk, and put more offenders behind bars. Originally published in 9-1-1 Magazine, this article highlights trends in 9-1-1 recording and examples of comm centers that are using new recording technology to achieve the above results. It also offers a glimpse into the not-too-distant future and the emerging technologies that promise even greater ROI. New approaches to trunked radio recording minimize risk and save time Recordings are like time travel. They allow a comm center to go back in time and reconstruct what happened. But think for a moment - what would you do if you couldn't find the recordings you needed, or piece them together in a coherent fashion? What if you couldn't even be sure they were recorded in the first place? Not too long ago this might have been a familiar dilemma for 9-1-1 centers that had few choices for recording their trunked radio communications. Today's trunked radio recording technology makes these problems a thing of the past. This new technology captures audio directly from the trunked radio system, ensuring that every radio communication is recorded. The system also taps into the data stream of the trunked radio network control channel to capture information about each radio transmission (the radio ID, alias, talkgroup ID, supergroup ID, the start and ending time of the transmission, and so on). This data holds the key to being able to quickly retrieve and replay recordings and reconstruct incidents. Specialized scenario replay software presents the recordings in a graphical timeline, showing the radio and phone communications as the incident unfolded. These capabilities are only possible through joint development and integration undertaken by the trunked radio system vendor and the recording solution provider. This trunked radio recording and replay technology is currently in use in many 9-1-1 centers, including the York County 9-1-1 Center in Virginia. York County records radio transmissions from its Motorola trunked radio system using this technology. According to Terry Hall, communications manager for York County, the system has improved productivity for his operation. "In the old days, if we got a call from someone doing an investigation on an accident or a specific incident, and they wanted all the radio traffic from unit 32, we'd have to go back and listen to everyone's radio traffic," said Hall. "Our new recording system gives us the ability to search by unit ID. We're able to zero in and set whatever parameters we want so we can listen to what we want." Hall says this has saved a tremendous amount lot of time. The Isle of Man government (located in the Irish Sea) has also invested in this very same solution to record radio and emergency communications for its police, fire and ambulance services. In the spring of 2004, the Isle of Man replaced its outdated analog radio system with a new TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) system and traded out a hodgepodge of recording technology for a new recording solution from NICE. Each month, the Isle of Man's Communications Division fields about 60 requests to provide recordings and transcripts. "We receive requests to search by radio ID, by talkgroups or by time or by event. So it's a varied list," said Robert Williamson, technical director for the Department of Home Affairs' Communications Division. The new system is vastly more efficient. Williamson explained: "If we took a request for recordings for a road traffic accident before, it would probably have taken a good day for the three services to pull that information together. Today, that same job can probably be done in about an hour." Unprecedented redundancy - mitigating risk and averting the worst case scenario Voice recordings of 9-1-1 and radio communications can protect an agency from costly litigation and lawsuits. Recordings can also be very telling in court, where they are often used as evidence at trial. Today's recording systems offer unprecedented levels of redundancy to ensure no recordings fall through the cracks. John Merklinger, director of the Monroe County Emergency Communications Department (ECD) located in upstate New York, doesn't mince words when asked why recording redundancy is so important. "We've had many cases in the last few years where our 9-1-1 recordings have actually resulted in convictions," he attested. "We've even had instances where individuals have confessed to crimes over the phone." What could happen if a recording was missed? Merklinger ponders the worst case scenario: "Imagine that somebody called 9-1-1 to report a crime, confessed to it and we don't have that recording for court," he said. Monroe County purchased its fault-tolerant recording system from Wilmac, an independent distributor and authorized NICE dealer based in Rochester, New York. Wilmac installed the 208 channel recording system in Monroe's newly-renovated center in January of 2004. Merklinger says the difference from their old technology is like night and day. "There's virtually no comparison to the analog reel to reel recording system," he said. The new system gives the County unparalleled redundancy. "We have two primary recorders and a third recorder that operates in a hot standby mode," said Merklinger. "It can take over for either one of the primary recorders in the unlikely event of a failure." The system even has redundant power supplies. At Monroe's request, Wilmac installed a separate 48 channel recorder at the County's emergency backup site. Both sites and systems are seamlessly connected over the County's fiber network. The County's recordings are captured on a hard drive and on two backup DVDs. Merklinger doesn't flinch at paying a bit more to record everything in triplicate. "It's all part of the cost of doing business," he said. "It could cost you a lot more money if a call went unrecorded and you didn't have the information." Improved access and ease of use yields ROI too In the past, recording systems were behemoth standalone devices, relegated to a back room or telecom closet. Although the actual physical recorders may still reside in the back room, today's recording system interfaces are front and center on the comm center floor. They're also networkable and intuitive to use. These seemingly small differences translate into big benefits for comm centers. Merklinger explained: "With our new system, we can basically sit down at any computer anywhere in the building and get access to recordings." This, Merklinger says, helps Monroe County provide better service to the community. "If a complaint comes in from a citizen at any time, even one o'clock in the morning, the shift supervisor can find the call, listen to it, and provide an answer right then and there," he said. The system is helping in other ways too. Each year, Monroe County 9-1-1 receives over 4,000 requests for copies of recordings for court or investigations, mainly from the district attorney (DA) and other user agencies. A recent change in state law regarding domestic violence cases created an upsurge in requests, which added to the Center's workload. But it's a workload that's greatly simplified with their new system. "Using our old system, it could take us a minimum of 45 minutes to an hour for each request," lamented Merklinger. "Using our new system, we can sit down, click a couple of buttons, and literally we've got the recording in a minute. We can copy it as a .wav file and send it over to the DA. We can even email it. It's a major time saver." But the bigger benefit is the increase in the County's domestic violence conviction rate that has resulted from having the recordings for court. Another agency benefiting from this technology is the Broome County Emergency Dispatch/9-1-1 Center. The Center handles all of the 9-1-1 calls for the City of Binghamton, New York and surrounding Broome County (which amounted to over a half-million calls last year alone). When the County needed a system that offered cost-effective long-term storage and fast access to recordings, it also turned to Wilmac and NICE. With its new recording system, the County is able to store four months of calls online on an array of eight hard drives. At the request of the district attorney, the Center also maintains a DVD archive of the previous two years' worth of calls. Using the scenario replay software, Broome can quickly access recordings and reconstruct incidents for investigations. "It saves an enormous amount of time," said Brett Chellis, communications supervisor for Broome County. "We're able to process requests twice as fast as before." Analytics - uncovering hidden information and improving response in the comm center The average comm center fields hundreds of thousands if not millions of calls a year. Plucking one recording out of mountains of recorded audio can be a lot like trying to find an elusive needle in a haystack. Audio analytics, including techniques like word spotting, offers 9-1-1 centers a faster, more efficient way to find recordings. Investigators can run sophisticated search queries using key words spoken by either the caller or call-taker. These might include words such as "bomb," "fire," "terrorist," knife," "kill," etc. Word spotting provides pinpoint precision search capability, but it can also prove invaluable when a comm center is faced with a large scale disaster or terrorist incident. "If you have an incident, like a bombing, your call volume could go from zero to wide open in just a matter of seconds," explained Hall. "This technology can help you see if you missed anything amidst all of those calls. What if one of those callers who called in was actually the person who set the bomb and you missed it?" According to Hall, the ability to use word spotting technology to alert 9-1-1 managers of critical situations in real-time could also be invaluable. In the near future those same key words spoken by the caller or call-taker (like "bomb") will cause bells and whistles to go off in the comm center. "Right now we do this manually," said Hall. "We have a room awareness button that's built onto our Gold Elite computer system that we click and its sets an alarm off in our facility, telling us that we've got an urgent call." Hall likes the idea of automating this function through word spotting because it removes the potential for human error. "If we could do this automatically it would give the dispatchers a better tool. It's critical that they have the best tools to do the job," he said. Other sources of data can also be leveraged to generate real-time alerts. For instance, a sudden burst in call volume or a spike in calls from a specific area code or location might signify an impending disaster. Recording systems have always been designed primarily for capturing voice communications, but these emerging voice analytics capabilities promise to give comm center managers better insight into the inner workings of the comm center. Today, only a handful of calls coming into the comm center are ever reviewed. In the near future, 9-1-1 centers will have a window into all of their comm center interactions. They'll be able to track and report on call trends (for instance, use word spotting to identify, red flag and quantify domestic violence calls). They'll also be able to use analytics to track call volumes and make better staffing and scheduling decisions. Voice analytics will also give comm centers new insight into how call-takers are handling calls. Call-takers need to stay calm under extreme pressure, even if the caller on the other end of the phone is irate. In the future, emotion detection software built into the recording system will be able to detect and measure the call-taker's temper and level of professionalism. Call-takers also need good listening skills. With the addition of talk analysis software, it will even be possible to identify when a call-taker is not listening, but instead repeatedly "talking over" the caller. 9-1-1 is going multi-media - recording technology is too! Recording technology has always focused exclusively on capturing voice, but multi-media is changing that. There are far more sources of vital information in the comm center today than were even imaginable a decade ago. Today much of this information is not captured and if it is, it's stored in separate, standalone systems. Voice recordings, video from police cars or surveillance cameras, mobile data, GIS and AVL information, call-taker CAD screens, crime scene photos, mobile cell phone pictures, text messages, Short Data Service (SDS) messages, incident reports, emails, faxes - all of these sources of information are pieces in the 9-1-1 puzzle. All are important to understanding what happened, and when, how and why. The next generation recording solutions will allow 9-1-1 centers to capture, store, and organize all of these various sources of multi-media information. Investigators will be able to access all of this information from one repository to create an on-screen incident folder where all the multi-media elements can be reviewed and replayed together. Further, agencies will be able to save the entire contents of a folder onto a DVD, and email it to an investigator or DA. Even better still, trusted third parties will be able to access these folders remotely over the network through a password protected application. Hall thinks this is the way of the future for 9-1-1 centers. "How great an opportunity it would be to have all of that information on a DVD to play in court where a judge or jury could actually experience the incident exactly as the dispatcher did," he said. But that's only the beginning. Hall also thinks that this new 360 degree view of incident handling will help agencies improve their emergency response in the future. "The benefit is efficiency," he said. "Everything we do in 9-1-1 is based on seconds. The more information we have the more successful we can be at improving our response." And although it may be difficult to quantify, that might turn out to be the biggest ROI of all. Want to learn more on this topic? Have a specific question? Email the author of this article, Jimmy Lutz, at jimmy.lutz@nice.com. |
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