Imagine getting word from dispatch about a car crash. Instead of a voice description, responders get live video taken by bystanders at the scene; close-up photos of the injured; and information relayed from the vehicle itself about whether airbags deployed, how fast the vehicle was traveling when it crashed and the direction of the impact. All of that information could change the response, including call urgency; how many and what type of emergency vehicles are needed; if helicopter EMS should be dispatched; if the injured are easily accessible or extrication or other equipment is needed; and whether victims are likely going to a community hospital or will need transport to a trauma center.
Not only could making that information available to responders improve patient care, but it could also improve the responders’ safety by giving them a heads-up about what to expect on scene, experts say. For example, the technology exists to allow “smart buildings” to send information such as building floor plans; videos; and data from motion, heat and biochemical sensors to dispatchers, who could then relay it to firefighters. The effort to make that sort of information available to EMS, fire, police and other emergency responders such as state transportation departments is known as Next Generation 911—and
public-safety leaders say it’s long overdue.
“I would like emergency responders to have the same capabilities as my granddaughter does in the back of her car with her handheld device, and currently we do not,” says Michael Brown, a retired fire chief and executive director of Washington Fire Chiefs in Olympia, Wash. “Most of our citizens are very capable of sending text messages and photos, yet we have no way to accept that information. We either need to get up to current technology and create a Next Generation system for the citizens we serve or we are taking big steps backward.” Brown headed the fire-rescue panel for the Transportation Safety Advancement Group (TSAG), a stakeholder group that recently published a major report, “Next Generation 9-1-1: What’s Next?”
Gregory Rohde, executive director of the E9-1-1 Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group formed in 2003 that’s made up of industry and public safety representatives, agreed there’s a need to overhaul the nation’s emergency response system. “Consumers are already in the Next Generation world,” he says. “They know how to share photos, videos and text. But public safety has not yet caught up with them.”
The current 911 system was developed in the 1960s using traditional wired telephones. “The infrastructure of the public safety answering points [PSAPs] has not changed much since the first 911 call made in 1968,” says Laurie Flaherty, coordinator of the National 911 Program, part of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. “It’s built on really old technology, and the technology people use every day to communicate with each other has gone way beyond the technology of those PSAPs.”
Efforts to upgrade the 911 system have proceeded in fits and starts, though there have been some advances, including what’s known as enhanced 911, or e-911. As cell phones became ubiquitous, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) required cell phone providers to make it possible for dispatchers to get location and callback information, just like with calls from land-lines. And in 2008, the FCC put into place stricter rules for voice-over-Internet protocol technology, basically Internet voice services such as Vonage that let you make a call from your computer. This move was due at least in part to some highly publicized tragedies, including a 2005 case in which a 3-month-old baby in Florida choked and the family said they were unable to get through to 911 using an Internet phone service.
High hurdles—with big benefits
Despite these advancements, the rapid pace of change in communications technology has left dispatchers, emergency responders and the public-safety community playing catch-up. These challenges will only get more complicated as the way in which we communicate, not to mention technological changes, march on, experts say.
For instance, today’s young people expect to be able to send photos and text, Rohde says, and soon may need to be re-educated about how to use 911. Cell phone owners between the ages of 18 and 29 send or receive an average of 88 texts daily, according to a Pew survey from May. “For many of them, their first instinct is to text,” Rohde says. Yet during the Virginia Tech shootings, there were reports of students frantically and quietly trying to text 911, not knowing those calls for help were going nowhere.
The current 911 system has also long been inadequate for the 6 to 8 percent of Americans who are deaf or hearing-
impaired, and whose numbers are rising. Though dispatch centers have TTY machines to communicate with this population, some people say the technology is not user-friendly. “It’s a matter of civil rights that people who are deaf or hard of hearing should have equal access to emergency care,” Rohde says.
In addition, the current PSAPs, which in most places are not connected with each other, are also vulnerable in times of natural disasters or major emergencies, Flaherty says. During Hurricane Katrina, for example, more than a dozen PSAPs were literally flooded or otherwise destroyed, and 911 calls from residents in their jurisdictions went unanswered.
Next Generation 911 would address that issue via wireless technology that would enable PSAPs to be interconnected, so that if one PSAP was unable to handle the calls it was receiving, those calls would automatically re-route elsewhere.
And Next Generation 911 could address another safety issue, says Ted Delbridge, M.D., professor and chair of the emergency medicine department at East Carolina University’s Brody School of Medicine in Greenville, N.C. On scene, responders often can’t talk to each other and don’t know what other agencies are seeing or doing, he says. An NG system would link all of those together, explains Delbridge, who led the EMS panel for the TSAG report.
But making all of that happen will require unprecedented changes to the aging 911 system, Rohde says—and significant hurdles remain. Those include coordinating and considering the needs of all stakeholders, including public safety and EMS, dispatchers, wireless providers and other technology vendors, along with local and state governments and the array of regulatory agencies.
“NG911 is not simply an incremental adjustment to a communications network,” Rohde says. “This is a complete fundamental change in how emergency communications networks are structured and what they’re capable of doing. And this is going to require figuring out some complex issues, including political, training, cultural and technical issues.”
Among the cultural changes: 911 operators expect a high level of security and reliability, Rohde says. “They place an extremely high level of importance on not getting cut off,” he explains. “The cultural challenge they are going to have to live with is that within a Next Generation 911 broadband connection, there is less reliability [in that respect].”
Another challenge is that whereas a phone call to 911 follows a relatively set route to get to the PSAP, it’s not that way with wireless broadband communications. “You have no idea what route it took to get there,” Rohde says. “It could go through servers all over the world. It’s a very different physical infrastructure than the phone line system.”
One often overlooked issue that impacts commercial interests: Service providers and PSAPs want federal liability protections to shield them from being sued in case of dropped calls and other technological foul-ups, a liability protection that traditional phone carriers and PSAPs currently have regarding 911 calls. “There is always going to be a hesitancy on the part of PSAPs and technology providers that they could potentially get sued if something goes wrong unless that’s put into place,”
Rohde says.
Another necessary step: developing technological guidelines for service providers, PSAPs and responders to ensure that the various software and hardware systems ultimately put into place have enough standardization and compatibility that information from one source can be used by another, Delbridge says.
Currently, parts of Europe are further along on the transformation than the United States. According to Rohde, there’s a southern region of Spain in which emergency dispatchers can ask bystanders using 3G phones to point their phone at the scene and, with the video function turned on, they can receive a live video feed from the scene which can then be shared with EMS, fire and police.
Protection, proceedings and progress
In the U.S., despite the daunting process that lies ahead, progress is being made. Supporters in Congress are pushing for the liability protection, while the FCC has launched a rule-making proceeding and is seeking comment on the issue of technical standards for wireless carriers and government agencies.
In September 2009, the federal government began awarding $40 million in grants to PSAPs to be used for hardware, software, training or consulting services to upgrade their equipment and operations to Next Generation technology in 30 states and U.S. territories.
The TSAG report, prepared with the help of national stakeholder groups, 911 technical experts and public safety experts, is also intended to serve as a resource for policymakers and stakeholders by addressing issues such as the types of information EMS and public safety want; “real life” scenarios about how NG911 would be used; and ways to overcome barriers to implementation, Delbridge says.
“What we can’t do is create a patchwork system, so that if I’m in one community I can send a text message to 911 but in another community I can’t,” he says. “We’re a very mobile society. We have to have some level of coordination to move the entirety of our 911 system onto a digital platform that is capable of a more expanded menu of communications options.”
