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ON THE JOB NEWS EYE ON EDUCATION DISCIPLINE SOCIAL NETWORKING JUST HANDED DOWN MISSION CRITICAL COMMUNICATIONS Cassidian Communications Upgrades 9-1-1 Call Processing in Virginia By Jennifer Gavigan Jennifer Gavigan is the Managing Editor of LAW and ORDER, Tactical Response and Police Fleet Manager. She can be reached at jgavigan@hendonpub.com.. www.CassidianCommunications.com I vides that extra sense of security should either one of our call centers become inoperable as the call takers at each location are familiar with the software and area." The James City County ECC, with 12 call taking positions, has been a Cassidian Communications customer since 1996. The ECC call takers answered over 150,000 calls for service in 2011 from the coun- ty's 70,000 residents and are responsible for dispatch- ing emergency calls to the local police, fire and EMS departments within James City County. The James City County ECC also monitors the Surry Nuclear Power Plant Warning System. n the mission critical environment, flexible and reliable communication is crucial for effective incident manage- ment. Remote and redundant handling of 9-1-1 and administrative calls is no longer a luxury; it is a necessity. Today's public safety operations need a solution to help meet these rigid requirements. Cassidian Communications, an EADS North America company, serves cli- ents ranging from public safety operations to Fortune 1,000 corporations to federal agencies. Collectively, the company has more than 40 years of experi- ence deploying 9-1-1 call processing solutions, notification solutions and first- responder digital trunked radio networks. Cassidian Communications successfully upgraded the 9-1-1 call processing solution at the York-Poquoson-Williamsburg Emergency Communications Cen- ter (ECC) and the James City County ECC in Virginia. The upgrades at York- Poquoson-Williamsburg and James City County, together, are one of the first geo-diverse Sentinel Patriot call-processing solution installations in the state. "Working together with our neighboring county, James City, gave us the opportunity to upgrade our existing equipment to a system that can provide a more seamless integration between multiple applications as well as with each other," stated Terry Hall, Chief of Emergency Communications, York-Poquo- son-Williamsburg Emergency Communications Center. "With the geo-diverse Sentinel Patriot [solution], our call takers can simply back up the James City County ECC should its call center become inoperable, and vice versa." Cassidian Communications customers since 1993, the York-Poquoson- Williamsburg ECC is equipped with 17 call taking positions and received approximately 325,000 calls for service in 2011. The call center is responsible for answering emergency calls from the more than 100,000 residents from the region and dispatching for the York-Poquoson Sheriff's Office, York County Department of Fire and Life Safety, the City of Poquoson Police and Fire De- partments, and the City of Williamsburg Police and Fire Department. "The solution suite provided by Cassidian Communications is one that elimi- nates steps in processing emergency calls for service and allows for a quicker dispatch time to first responders," said Tal Luton, fire chief, James City County ECC. "And, having the back-up of the York-Poquoson-Williamsburg ECC pro- 16 LAW and ORDER I July 2012 Sentinel Patriot Two-thirds of all 9-1-1 call centers in the United States rely on Cassidian Communications' fully integrated call handing solutions that facilitate the call taking and dispatching processes for faster, more efficient response results. The Sentinel Patriot solution's IP architecture, designed expressly for next-generation (NG) 9-1-1 applications, is based on current and evolving critical communications technologies and standards. This allows for the sophisticated design of backup, disaster recovery and overflow operations with the assured ability to provide reliable service under unexpected conditions. The geo-diverse de- ployment model provides maximum system surviv- ability, and the efficient network architecture design minimizes data traffic and bandwidth usage for on- going cost savings. The Sentinel Patriot solution is a robust, standards- based software solution, engineered to accommodate the physical and functional specifications of today's emergency call centers. Based on a distributed IP (Internet Protocol) architecture, it features a fully in- tegrated PBX with redundant servers and no single point of failure. The Sentinel Patriot solution also offers a full suite of computer telephony features, including automatic call distribution (ACD) and au- tomatic number identification / automatic location identification (ANI/ALI) capabilities. Supporting the needs of 9-1-1 and administrative calling, the Sentinel Patriot solution's embedded PBX offers many of today's most popular features. Its ACD capabilities, including overflow handling and multiple call management schemes, bring efficiency