NICE News Special Edition - Volume 3, Issue 4

	CHRIS WOOTEN UPDATE TOM RIDGE VISITS NICE NICE NEWS SPECIAL EDITION CHANGES NICE INFORM™ WEBINAR: REGISTER TODAY THE NEXT BIG THING IN 9-1-1: MULTIMEDIA NICE INTRODUCES NICEVISION NET™ MEET JEFF HORWITZ, ARLINGTON COUNTY ECC BELGIAN RAILWAYS NETWORK 2007 PSAPS' FINEST AWARDS NICE IN THE NEWS PUBLIC SAFETY RESOURCE CENTER NICE EVENTS




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TACKLING THE NEXT BIG THING IN 9-1-1: MULTIMEDIA

Not since the first 9-1-1 call was placed more than three decades ago has public safety communications been on the threshold of greater change. The convergence of voice and data over wireless and IP networks has put 9-1-1 at a crossroads. Staggering numbers of cell phones, wireless devices, coupled with high consumer adoption of Voice over IP is opening up a whole new world of multimedia communications. Examples also abound where law enforcement officials are using multimedia evidence, such as video surveillance footage, to crack cases and win convictions. As these trends accelerate, public safety operations face a new challenge - how to capture, manage and make sense of all of this multimedia information.

Historically, the recording system, a staple of every 9-1-1 center, was designed to capture voice - the radio communications, and the 9-1-1 calls that come in to the PSAP over the public switched telephone network. But someday soon, a call to 9-1-1 might not be a call in the traditional "voice" sense at all. Instead, it might be a real-time text message sent from a PDA, a Video Relay Service (VRS) communication from a hearing impaired caller, an emergency alert generated by a medical device or central alarm, or an automatic crash notification delivered to the PSAP by way of a third party telematics response center.

A wireless 9-1-1 voice call might even be accompanied by streaming video of an accident scene, or a still picture of a suspect vehicle. But the communication won't stop there. Dispatchers will be able to relay this essential multimedia information - images, video, text and data - to police, fire or EMS personnel, along with other multimedia information, like floor plans, instructional videos, or medical data - before the first responders even arrive on the scene.

Welcome to Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG 9-1-1), 9-1-1 for an IP-centric and multimedia saturated world. It's not here yet - but it's coming. The groundwork is already being laid for NG 9-1-1. Considering this development and other multimedia trends - such as the growing role of surveillance video in ensuring security and safety - agencies are scrambling for better ways to capture, manage and analyze what, in just a few short years, could turn into mountains of multimedia information.

New public safety insights: from voice to video...and beyond
Gone are the days where incident reconstructions revolved only around the voice recordings, CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) records and eyewitness accounts. Instead, public safety operations are gearing up to garner insights from a variety of multimedia sources.

Consider this scenario: A bystander leaving a shopping mall witnesses a "hit and run." The driver races off, leaving the scene of the accident and a severely injured pedestrian in his wake. The bystander immediately dials 9-1-1 to report the incident. A recording of the 9-1-1 call is retrieved and replayed in the ensuing investigation. But it turns out that the voice recording isn't the only crucial piece of evidence. The bystander used her cell phone to take a snapshot of the fleeing vehicle's license plate, and a surveillance camera, perched atop the mall entryway with a clear view of the parking lot, captured the entire incident, including a close up shot of the suspect.

The latter situation is hypothetical, of course, but everyday news accounts reveal real-life examples of how cell phone images and video are helping law enforcement officials catch criminals and terrorists in the act. The most notable perhaps was the London suicide bombing that occurred in 2005. In the final analysis, it was video surveillance footage and pictures snapped on ordinary cell phones that helped police peg the individuals who carried out the attack.

In a post 9/11 world, video surveillance has become pervasive. In the U.S. alone, it's estimated that four billion hours of footage are recorded on 30 million video surveillance cameras each week.* Law enforcement entities from more than a dozen U.S. cities are involved in CCTV video surveillance programs to deter, detect and investigate crime. In some cases, video from CCTV cameras is even routed directly to the PSAP to provide valuable real-time information about what's going on at remote hot spots. Video can also have a powerful impact in the courtroom. There is a lot of anecdotal information and evidence to suggest that the use of video boosts both guilty pleas and conviction rates.

Other sources of video and multimedia information can be telling for investigations, too. For example, video from the scene of a building fire, or in-vehicle mobile video from a police car dashboard, can shed light on what happened at the scene, while captured screens from a GIS (Geographic Information System) or CAD system, can reveal details about a telecommunicator's handling of an incident.

While there are more sources of multimedia incident information than ever before (voice, video, images, and screens) - today, much of this information, if it is recorded at all, is captured in standalone systems that weren't designed for interoperability. The video is digitally recorded in one place - the voice recordings are captured and stored in another. Multimedia incident management technology gives public safety operations a new solution for capturing, consolidating, analyzing and managing multimedia incident information from different sources and various formats.

Among the first public safety agencies to implement multimedia incident management technology is Douglas County, Colorado. Covering 844 square miles, Douglas County is one of the fastest growing areas in Colorado, with a population just shy of 300,000. The three primary PSAPs for Douglas County collectively handle more than 600,000 citizen calls each year.

"It's not going to be the traditional 9-1-1 as we know it in the next 5 to 10 years," said Mike Coleman, Bureau Chief of the Douglas County Sheriff's Office Administrative Services Bureau. "We're going to have text messages, audio, video, data coming back from cars and buildings that we never had before. We're really seeing where this technology is going to deliver for us as we prepare ourselves for the future."

Coleman elaborates: "Until now, if we needed to do an investigation or incident review, we'd have to go back to multiple sources and manually connect that information together. This technology is going to change the dynamics of how we do business by allowing us to integrate the dispatch audio, 9-1-1 and radio, and even video. It's going to give us a new dimension of analysis for an ever-demanding environment."

He cites two specific examples where capturing video along with first responder and 9-1-1 voice communications, could prove beneficial - DUI traffic stops and fires. "Using this technology, we can begin to build our cases in the field," he said. "For instance, the visual cues at the scene of a fire could tell us the effectiveness of the firefighters in their endeavor. If we can take all our field audio, video and data and put it all together, we'll be able to augment our reconstruction and understanding of incidents."

Multimedia incident reconstruction: how it works
Multimedia incident reconstruction can help agencies quickly connect the dots in an investigation by allowing them to create a visual and audible timeline of an incident. How is this different from traditional voice recording? While voice recordings can reveal "who said what to whom," multimedia reconstruction can reveal what actually happened, which can be key to zeroing in on the convicting evidence or the cause and effect. Who did what, why, where and when? Multimedia incident reconstruction yields a complete chronology of the incident as it unfolded, through time-sequenced voice recordings, video, data and captured call-taker screens.

Consider this example. A 9-1-1 center for a major U.S. city records and monitors CCTV cameras strategically placed on major roadways and metro tunnels that criss-cross the city. Early one December morning, a flurry of wireless and landline 9-1-1 calls come into the center reporting smoke in the main metro tunnel. The live video feed from the tunnel, displayed on the video wall of the center, provides immediate visual confirmation of smoke and flames. The center's 9-1-1 system with GIS mapping software pinpoints the GPS location of the wireless callers. The telecommunicator handling the call uses all of the available information to confirm the incident location, assess the situation's severity, and dispatch appropriate resources, advising them of the fastest route to the scene. She provides vital pre-arrival instructions until assistance can arrive.

It is later learned that the incident resulted in a number of serious injuries and one death. The mayor of the city requests a full accounting. Fortunately, the center is able to piece together all of the multimedia information to recreate a complete visual and audible timeline of the incident. The center's director simply enters the time and date parameters into his multimedia incident management system and he is able to instantly retrieve all of the multimedia information concerning the incident and review it synchronously. From one screen, he is able to see and hear all of the 9-1-1 calls and radio dispatch communications. At the same time, he views the recorded CCTV video from the scene. In a separate corner of the replay screen, the recorded GIS display shows the location of the wireless callers in proximity to the responding units. Captured CAD screens, also displayed in the same window, reveal every click and entry that the telecommunicator made as she handled the call. After he reviews the information, he saves the multimedia reconstruction on a CD which is hand-delivered by messenger to the mayor's office that very same morning.

The multimedia reconstruction of the incident answers a number of gnawing questions. When did the first 9-1-1 calls come in? What was happening at the scene? Did the call-taker ask the right questions? Enter the right information? Did she follow the correct EMD protocols? Make the right decisions given the situation? Were the necessary fire and EMS resources dispatched? How quickly did help arrive, and what happened once the units arrived on the scene?

In this situation, the mayor and management of our fictitious 9-1-1 center are able to breathe a collective sigh of relief as they realize the city has averted a multi-million dollar law suit. The multimedia incident reconstruction proves beyond a doubt that the incident was handled properly and professionally. But had the center's response been less than adequate, the reconstruction would have yielded insight into where, when, how and why things went wrong, and how response could be improved in the future.

Keeping the justice information flow flowing: what you need to know
Another challenge that public safety agencies will face in the not-too-distant future is how to keep justice information flowing in the face of mountains of multimedia information, mounting subpoenas and requests for information, and shrinking budgets and resources. It's no minor issue - large agencies can receive tens of thousands of requests for reproductions in a single year and processing all of those requests can involve dozens of highly-trained staff working round the clock.

Multimedia incident management technology can lend a helping hand there too - by streamlining investigations and providing an automated and secure way for agencies to prepare, package and deliver multimedia evidence.

In addition to voice recordings and video, there are literally hundreds of potential sources of information and evidence used in the criminal justice process, each potentially crucial to building a case. This might include everything from fingerprints and mug shots to crime scene photos, incident reports, faxes, emails, arrest records, and other supporting documents. Now, all of this multimedia information relating to the case can be easily assembled and retained within a secure electronic folder that can be archived online, and tagged with a unique file number, incident number or other reference information for historical tracking and fast look up.

The multimedia contents of the electronic incident folder can be copied onto a CD, emailed or accessed online by individuals with proper security access, and can be authenticated using digital signatures. Chain of custody, which is essential to ensuring the integrity of multimedia evidence, is also protected because the system automatically maintains an audit trail, detailing each time an incident folder with multimedia evidence is accessed, and by whom.

District attorneys and investigators frequently rely on multiple sources of evidence, and according to Coleman, the ability to capture, securely retain, authenticate, and manage all of this information in an online electronic incident filing system will have benefits beyond efficiency gains.

"This technology is going to enable us to look at what happened in a way that we couldn't before, and then very efficiently package this information so we can do a better job of serving the public," he said.

Learn more about NICE's solution for multimedia incident information management. Visit the NICE Inform™ web page on the NICE website at www.nice.com/solutions/public/nice_inform.php or email welcome@nice.com.

*Source: "Learning to Love a Bigger Big Brother," September 27, 2006, Annie Lindstrom, Motorola CONNECTIONS