2024 ANNUAL REPORT - Final

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EMERGENCY SERVICES

Computer Aided Dispatch System

On Tuesday, April 23, 2024, Frederick County placed in-service a completely new Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system. This new Motorola P1 CAD system replaced a 20-year-old system that had reached the end of its life. The CAD system is what is used by the Emergency Communications Center (ECC) to process 911 calls and then provides dispatchers the recommended units to be dispatched to the emergency. This project was years in making and while ECC functions under the Division of Emergency Management all stakeholders/end users participated heavily in the project. Several workgroups were formed to tackle the many facets of this process and DFRS was a participant in each. The first step was development of the scope of work and conditions so vendors could reply to a Request for Proposals (RFP). ECC, DFRS, Police Agencies, Animal Control and others completed this process individually to ensure their needs where being identified. Then each of these groups came together to combine their information into one document and the RFP was advertised. Vendors submitted their proposal in the fall of 2020 and each group began the daunting process of reviewing these very detailed and complex proposals to ensure their needs where being met. Again, the groups came together to compare findings and develop a list of questions. Qualified vendors were then invited to provide a demonstration of their product(s), and answer questions from the combined workgroup. Eventually Motorola was selected and the work shifted to developing (provisioning) the system from the ground up. Because the old system was 20 years old the decision was made to not “transfer” information from it to the new system, so this meant starting from a blank canvas. DFRS was heavily involved in the provisioning of the new Motorola CAD system. Automating Fire Department response is very complex compared to many other CAD users and as such resulted in DFRS forming a small team to work alongside the CAD system manager from ECC to complete this task. The team also worked closely with the counties Public Safety GIS Team as the GIS data is the heartbeat of any CAD system. CAD relies on GIS data to ensure resources get dispatched to the right location. The DFRS team also worked with the counties Public Safety IIT Department because with the new CAD system came a new Mobile Data Terminal (MDT) System. This allows information from the CAD system to be fed to the MDT computers you see in fire engines, ambulances, police and other vehicles. This work began in October of 2022 and continued until we went live on April 23, 2024. Today the work group still commits many hours per week to the continued improvement of the system. We also continue to work with our GIS and IIT partners to improve those areas of the overall system. We are also working with our neighboring jurisdictions and others on being able to mutually operate CAD-to-CAD. This allows participants to see and share valuable information with each other live and will eliminate the need to call those neighboring jurisdiction to see if certain assets are available for call in the requestor’s jurisdiction. This will save precious time in an emergency and instantaneously provide all responders the most accurate information available.

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