911 Consulting - Adding Value by Solving the Problem

Editor's Notes

• #4: Kari met her estranged husband in a Marshall, Texas hotel for visitation with their 3 children Her ex-husband brutally attacked and stabbed her 49 times in front of her children Her 9 year old daughter tried to call 911 In fact, she tried to call 4 times, but the calls failed Finally, she rushed her 2 siblings to safety Kari Hunt Dunn died from her injuries before help could arrive Why did the calls fail? You needed to dial 9-911 from the hotel room But that’s not what we teach our children This is why Avaya in cooperation with Hank Hunt is promoting the No 9 Needed campaign, to raise awareness and fix this simple problem.
• #9: The problem today is that emergency call routing is based on a few basic principals. The first is the telephone number being presented to the network for routing. It assumes that each address has a unique telephone number, therefore making the phone number the database key for the emergency call routing entity in the network. The database manages the proper mapping of telephone number to the proper agency for called delivery.
• #10: While this is typically sufficient for residential citizens, individuals within a corporate enterprise have additional challenges due to large campuses with multiple buildings. These may have no, or unclear, street addresses as they are on private property, and secure buildings may have access control requirements and multiple floors serviced by various entrances. Enterprise users are typically not afforded the same level of location granularity, and while technology is available, it is often too confusing or expensive to deploy. Because of this, Enterprise Public Safety issues are often pushed to the side or forgotten about, until a tragedy happens.
• #21: When deploying a commercial enterprise class system, the very first decision that must be made is what level of granularity of detail is the system going to provide both internally and to public safety control rooms. Since many of us are accustomed to the residential model the initial inclination is to build a public automatic location identification record for each individual. Unfortunately, this becomes difficult to manage as the database can become quite large, due to user mobility around the campus, and the lack of real time access to the database, moves adds and changes can be difficult and complex to manage, often requiring expensive “middleware” to collect the move data, and batch process changes in the evening. In addition to incurring a monthly cost per record, there is historically no real-time access to the database. Therefore changes are not immediately populated, which is when they most likely would be needed the most since a user would be new to their surroundings and may not be able to describe their location.
• #22: As you can see, 50 phones across 10 floors across three different buildings quickly scales out of control Services that manage location data for a few dollars a month per station can get expensive very quickly. Imagine 10 floors in each building, Three buildings in a campus. That works out to 1500 telephone numbers that need to be individually managed monthly. At a seemingly minimal cost of two dollars per month per record, that’s $3000 in operational overhead, every single month, and we haven’t even started with the solution yet.
• #23: By segmenting each building into a zone-based approach, we can provide an appropriate response address for each individual building, while providing responders with floor level details. In addition to this information being passed to public safety, local internal first responders can get explicit detail about the exact location of the station that made the emergency call. This enables an immediate on-site response, and allows first responders to meet public safety at the appropriate building entrance, ensuring quick and unobstructed passageway to the employee in need of assistance. Operationally, we still have the same level of detail, however financially we’ve reduced the requirement for 1500 ALI records( $3000 a month at two dollars per entry) to 30 records( $60 a month at two dollars per entry). that works out to be a savings of more than $35,000 annually.
• #24: By segmenting each building into a zone-based approach, we can provide an appropriate response address for each individual building, while providing responders with floor level details. In addition to this information being passed to public safety, local internal first responders can get explicit detail about the exact location of the station that made the emergency call. This enables an immediate on-site response, and allows first responders to meet public safety at the appropriate building entrance, ensuring quick and unobstructed passageway to the employee in need of assistance. Operationally, we still have the same level of detail, however financially we’ve reduced the requirement for 1500 ALI records( $3000 a month at two dollars per entry) to 30 records( $60 a month at two dollars per entry). that works out to be a savings of more than $35,000 annually.
• #25: it is easily monitored by centralized security personnel and correlated with other information such as floor plans hazardous material information or even IP video feeds that could then be provided to internal first responders over the wireless network. While there is no mechanism in place today to be able to transmit this information to public safety, that is on the near horizon with next-generation emergency services. The more that enterprises can prepare today, the better situated they’ll be in the immediate future. Education on how they can be a partner with next-generation emergency services is critical as are expected to ramp up quickly, and at a global scale.
• #27: The third basic system requirement is one that’s more policy. The interception or termination of emergency calls internally should be prohibited unless trained staff have been assigned to this function. Public safety call takers and dispatchers have received specialized training in handling emergency calls, and by answering or intercepting the call locally, MLTS users are delaying what could be lifesaving assistance.
• #28: while this level of information certainly adds relevant data to the question of location, it by itself is not typically enough to provide discrete information to specifically locate an individual. Fortunately corporate enterprise networks contain additional data resources that can be utilized and queried. Information from LDAP and active directory can provide details on the individual. The user themselves may even contribute additional personal or medical information that they have opted in for. Relevant data points from the wireless LAN infrastructure or the ML TS PBX itself can provide visibility into the device that was used to place an emergency call. That information, correlated with cable management records can be utilized to fine tune the location. And finally, critical environmental information from smart buildings or HVAC systems can provide important clues such is ambient temperature or smoke conditions in the origination area of the emergency call. When looking at an emergency call hangups, this additional information can be critical in determining real calls from hoax calls. This model also will neatly packages this information for retrieval or transmission to public safety entities, once a next generation emergency services network infrastructure is put in place.
• #29: Inexpensive, yet highly functional software modules are that provide verbose notification to emergency call events on the network. 1st Responder clients can be anywhere on the network that has connectivity to the enterprise will. This would include remote branch offices or VPN users. In addition to providing local on-site responders with critical information the server also acts as an integration point for the conveyance of rich location data to public safety.
• #30: Nomadic behavior can be seen in almost any device today. Any device can be nomadic TDM devices, although static most of the time, may provide users with virtual office login capabilities. This effectively changes the service parameters about the device based on who is using it. Voice over IP devices become problematic because of the ability for users to move themselves without administrative intervention. Wireless LAN devices are constantly on the move as an inherent function of their technology. The most problematic scenarios today, remote VPN teleworkers. Not only is their location nomadic in nature, in many cases it is difficult if not impossible to achieve any level of forensics on the remote network they are attached to. Fortunately, the enterprise MLTS PBX can provide functionality such as on-site notification, proper call routing to VPC carriers which can terminate calls to remote control rooms. This functionality, while widely available in the US and North America, is quickly expanding across the EU member states. Utilizing these services, applications exist where remote teleworkers can manage their location information through the use of dynamic web-based location dashboard that was specifically designed for emergency call mobility from devices that are external to the enterprise network.
• #38: Because we are delivering detailed location information via SIP with the call . . . . ANI and ALI databases are NO LONGER relevant when the originating endpoint or the PBX they are attached too is capable of sending contextual information and references to additional data like: Floorplans Environmental Data Video Feeds HazMat Material Safety Data Sheets Personal Medical Information (if the user allows)