by AllThingsECC.com | Jun 11, 2019 | Comm Center News
GeoComm Selected for North Carolina NG 9-1-1 GIS Data Project
As part of the project, GeoComm will complete a statewide GIS educational campaign aimed at helping the local agencies understand the goals of the statewide NG 9-1-1 project, the processes that will be completed throughout the project, and the overall importance of the GIS data assessment phase.
In addition, GeoComm will complete a GIS data assessment of each individual county’s GIS data to determine its readiness for an NG 9-1-1 system. All participating North Carolina counties will be onboarded to GeoComm GIS Data Hub NG 9-1-1 GIS data validation and aggregation of the data into a statewide dataset. Quality control check processing will also be completed providing data quality reports to each of the participating counties.
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by AllThingsECC.com | Jun 11, 2019 | Comm Center News
Carbyne Partners with SOMA Global on Cloud-Based Dispatch Software
The integrated solution allows a public-safety answering point (PSAP) to be established anywhere where there is a secure, high-speed internet connection. Public locations such as libraries, municipal buildings or schools can become fully functioning PSAPs in seconds. Call-takers and dispatchers can log in to the platform to be back online.
The SOMA Global partnership with Carbyne expands upon Carbyne’s strategy of partnering with cloud-based technology companies. Carbyne’s next-generation 9-1-1 (NG 9-1-1) platform is powered by Cisco technology, making it powerful and adaptable for advanced partner capabilities.
The partnership also opens a great deal of opportunity for improved public-safety response. The cloud-native approach taken by the two companies drives enhanced resiliency through an array of diverse routing paths, easier integration with advanced applications, and a cost-effective approach to call-handling and dispatch due to the elimination of on-premise servers.
“There is a great deal of untapped potential in public safety at this time,” said Peter Quintas, CEO and co-founder of SOMA Global. “The technologies being used in most emergency communications centers are 20-plus years old, the enterprise space and the federal government have moved on to more efficient, more flexible and more effective technologies, it is time for public safety to take a huge leap forward. Working together with Carbyne, we see enormous opportunity to provide best-of-breed solutions for public safety.”
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by AllThingsECC.com | Jun 4, 2019 | Articles, Comm Center News
By Lori Stone, FirstNet Authority Region III Lead
Public safety agencies from the Commonwealth of Virginia and the State of Maryland recently conducted search and rescue exercises in Gore, VA — a remote region in the Shenandoah Valley — and called on FirstNet to help support their emergency communications during the event. The joint effort involved the Virginia Communications Cache, the National Capital Region (NCR) Communications Interoperability Group, and the Frederick County (VA) Sheriff Office, among others.
Sean Fensterwald, master technician for the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department, participated in the exercises in Gore and saw the benefits of FirstNet for rural first responders firsthand. He explained, “When they [rural first responders] get these emergencies … and their phones work, they have internet, and have the reach back to their home agencies or actually the programs they’re using — it’s huge.”
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by AllThingsECC.com | Jun 3, 2019 | Comm Center News
Industry Disagrees on Best 9-1-1 Indoor Location Data Delivery Option
In March, the FCC sided with public safety and proposed a vertical (Z axis) location accuracy metric of ±3 meters relative to the handset for 80 percent of indoor wireless 9-1-1 calls. The new rules would help first responders more accurately locate people who make wireless 9-1-1 calls from multistory buildings, said the commission, which requested comment on the proposal.
The majority of those who submitted comments agreed that a location accuracy metric of ±3 meters relative to the handset for 80 percent of indoor wireless 9-1-1 calls is attainable, but the disagreement surrounds how to deliver that information to public-safety answering points (PSAP).
The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) comments suggested a dispatchable location including the room number, floor, street and city where a 9-1-1 call originated is the best option for location accuracy.
“The benefit of the dispatchable location is that it provides location information that would be easy for first responders to react to,” said Walt Magnussen, PhD, Texas A&M Internet2 Technology Evaluation Center (ITEC) director. “It would include the z-axis in the form of a floor level, which if accurate and coupled with a room number, would allow the first responder to quickly get to the scene. The problem with this format is that there are no standards in a dispatchable location for the floor number or level. In a multistory building such as a hotel that has a sublevel or basement, then a ground floor or lobby, then is the first floor the second floor, the second level or the fourth level? Then we add complications like the 80% of the buildings that do not have a 13th floor.”
In its comments, the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) requested a geodetic location, which is latitude, longitude and elevation. A geodetic location is based on the industry-approved Presence Information Data Format Location Object (PIDF-LO) standard defined in Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) RFC 4119, which was initially drafted in December of 2005 and has been updated three times since.
NENA made four points in its comments. Dispatchable location, as defined, is not the most accurate, useful or efficient means to locate an individual. Geodetic location information provides the best information for 9-1-1 to locate a caller. The location of a caller must be delivered to the 9-1-1 system as a standards-based, interoperable LO, carried over IP and expressed as a geodetic LO, which includes the FCC’s proposed z-axis measurement. CTIA’s most recent report calls into question the future viability of the National Emergency Address Database (NEAD), NENA said.
The May 20 deadline for comments followed a CTIA report that found only 38.7% of valid test calls conducted during recent dispatchable location testing for 9-1-1 calls produced a result that meets the requirements for actionable dispatchable location as defined by Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) standards.
For Eddie Reyes, director of the Office of Public Safety Communications in Prince William County, Virginia, knowing the door to knock down during an emergency is critical. “To me, the dispatchable location — the civic address generated through the NEAD — is what we’re looking for,” Reyes said.
In its comments, ATIS said that to ensure that PSAPs can convert location information to the format that best suits their needs, a baseline requirement would be to deliver the information as height above ellipsoid per World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS-84) datum. T-Mobile also advocated for the FCC to adopt WGS-84 as the reference system for altitude estimates instead of floor identifiers.
AT&T said carriers should be required to provide z-axis location information only as height above mean sea level (MSL) rather than height above ground level (AGL) or a specific floor level. MSL provides the most reliable method for measuring compliance as it does not vary by building characteristics or unique geography like AGL, AT&T said.
“Indeed, converting MSL data to AGL data requires familiarity with variations in terrain and specific structure characteristics,” the AT&T comments said. “First responders are more familiar with the terrain and structures in their jurisdictions and are in the best position to use the z-axis data to identify emergency caller location in a given structure. Thus, to minimize the risk of error, it is appropriate that carriers provide MSL data that first responders can use to precisely locate emergency callers.”
The Boulder Regional Emergency Telephone Service Authority (BRETSA) said it prefers vertical location information be presented as a height AGL and MSL, with accuracy and confidence data.
Location technology vendor NextNav said to ensure technical neutrality, the commission should refrain from adopting any measurement standard to report vertical location information. If a standard is adopted, however, it should be height above ellipsoid (HAE), which NextNav said is the most accurate and reliable means available and is also the standard used for the GPS. “Other options, such as height above MSL, height AGL or the floor number assigned by the building owner, would introduce additional variables in the calculation process, some of which would be impossible to achieve using existing technology and would inevitably reduce reliability and cause confusion for public safety,” the company said in its comments.
The International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC), National Association of EMS Officials (NASEMSO) and the National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA) submitted joint comments noting the FCC should direct wireless carriers to focus additional efforts on achieving compliance with the dispatchable location requirement and on developing the NEAD database further to ensure that a dispatchable location is achieved, with significant yield.
Magnussen said using the power of smartphones’ current and future location acquisition mechanisms to calculate the most accurate x, y and z location makes sense. “It is uncertain how either the device or a service provider supporting the device would use this information to generate the floor and room number for mobile callers,” he said. “Any such system would further tie us to static databases such as the current ALI (automatic location identification) databases, which is counter to all next-generation 9-1-1 (NG 9-1-1) initiatives.”
A link to all the comments is here. Reply comments are due June 18.
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by AllThingsECC.com | Jun 1, 2019 | Articles, Comm Center News
By First Responder Network Authority
Senator Capito and First Responder Network Authority Join Ground Breaking; New Infrastructure Will Help Advance Public Safety, Improve Connectivity for Area Residents
KINGWOOD, W. Va., May 29, 2019 – Preston County’s first responders will soon be getting a major boost in their access to broadband communications with the addition of a new, purpose-built cell site. The site – located in Fellowsville – is part of the FirstNet network expansion taking place in West Virginia, which is bringing increased coverage, capacity and capability to first responders across the state. Plus, the new FirstNet site will give Preston County’s first responders access to the fastest overall network experience.
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by AllThingsECC.com | May 29, 2019 | Comm Center News
Two California Agencies Contract Datamark for GIS Data for NG 9-1-1
San Mateo County commissioned Datamark to complete an estimated $400,000 data implementation project to ensure the accuracy and completeness of its address databases. The project, scheduled for completion in 2019, includes creating road centerlines, performing an address comparison evaluation, and aggregating geographic information system (GIS) data from existing sources into one database to meet the specific provisioning needs of the CAD system and NG9-1-1 requirements.
San Mateo County first engaged with Michael Baker International in 2017 on an enterprise technical architecture project to provide technical architecture recommendations. As part of that project, Datamark assessed the county’s public-safety communications department’s use of GIS data and process workflows. San Mateo County contracted Datamark in early 2018 to develop a quality assurance plan to implement the technical recommendations. The plan offered a road map of data sources, efforts and costs to address the dynamic goals of the project.
In addition, the Merced County (California) GIS Department awarded Datamark the nearly $109,000 contract to develop a master road and address database for use by public-safety agencies and enterprise planning committees. The project, which goes through December 2019, aims to increase both the completeness and accuracy of Merced County’s road and address database for address management and NG 9-1-1 GIS data preparation purposes.
Datamark will work with county professionals to assess and create the master road and address database from existing sources of address data. In addition to assisting the public-safety groups with the 9-1-1 and CAD systems, the newly created database advances Merced County’s readiness for the transition to NG 9-1-1. Enterprise planning groups will also leverage the complete and accurate address database to better serve roads, assessors, election and planning committees.
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