New System will Improve Emergency Response, Streamline Operations and Lower Total Cost of Operation
BIRMINGHAM, AL, January 2014 - Emergency CallWorks, Inc., a leading provider of Next Generation 9-1-1 and incident management software for the public safety industry, announced today that Tuscaloosa County, the second-largest in the state by area and sixth-largest by population, has selected Emergency CallWorks (ECW) to supply advanced 9-1-1 call management and call mapping. The new system, built to meet and exceed the latest Next Generation (NG) 9-1-1 standards, will help improve emergency response, streamline and consolidate operations and lower the county’s total cost of operation and technology.
The new NG 9-1-1 call management solution will be deployed with the capability to service all of the existing Public Safety Answering Points (PSAP’'s) within Tuscaloosa County. There are 33 public safety agencies, including eight police, 23 fire and two EMS agencies across the county.
“Public safety will be enhanced for Tuscaloosa County by implementing this new 9-1-1 technology that will improve our emergency response capabilities and expand services for the citizens of our community,” said Rod Coleman, Director of Tuscaloosa County 9-1-1 Communications District. “We are upgrading to integrated call taking and call mapping software from Emergency CallWorks that utilizes the latest in technology such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and geo-diverse, redundant hosting. We will be able to consolidate technology, reduce maintenance cost and add more operational continuity across the county for large-scale emergencies.”
Instead of building onto legacy 9-1-1 system technology and silos, the ECW solution was developed from the ground up to take advantage of the new Next Generation 9-1-1 standards, the latest technology and state-of-the art capabilities for hosted deployments. The ECW 9-1-1 call management solution provides users with a more intuitive, web browser-based interface to manage calls. The software is built to allow faster innovation, more scalability, lower cost, fault tolerance and needs substantially less hardware than typical emergency call taking systems. The solution will be deployed in an easily scalable, geo-diverse, multi-site environment with flexibility and capacity to handle community growth, consolidation strategies and geographical or disaster recovery situations.
Coleman added, “We had ambitious goals to improve our 9-1-1 system to cutting edge capabilities, with the same level of capabilities being used by some of the very largest counties in the country while reducing our costs. We are very excited to have found a solution that met our lofty goals. We believe we will be ready to meet the functionality and technology demands of our citizens not just today but well into the future, while lowering costs for Tuscaloosa County taxpayers.”
ECW provides emergency call taking, mapping, incident management and decision support software solutions for small rural PSAPs and large multi-site operations across the country. “We are excited to be addressing needs here locally in Alabama,” stated Craig Parker, CEO of Emergency CallWorks. “With the addition of Tuscaloosa, we now serve several of the largest counties in Alabama including Baldwin, Jefferson and Shelby counties.”
Tuscaloosa County is the second largest county in the state of Alabama by area. In 2013 Tuscaloosa County answered over 220,000 9-1-1 calls and dispatched nearly 230,000 public safety events.
Rod Coleman further explained the County’s decision, “Emergency CallWorks has an excellent national reputation as an innovation leader in the future of 9-1-1 call taking and dispatch management. Their solution is already ‘future-ready.’ Soon, we will be adding emergency texting standards as they evolve as well as advanced visual communications using our new system.”
About Emergency CallWorks
Emergency CallWorks, Inc. provides the PSAP and Dispatch community with the industry’s first vertically and horizontally integrated solution for receiving Next Generation 911 calls, dispatching first responders and other resources, and transmission of critical information to the mobile workforce while providing a vast array of benefits from VoIP technology. Emergency CallWorks products improve control and administration of the E-911, Emergency Management and Dispatch workflow process while enhancing the speed and accuracy of emergency response. For more information, visit www.emergencycallworks.com.