Standards: Will New Standard for 911 Service Help?


Written by Paul Kirvan on April 22, 2009 in Crisis Management and Crisis Communication, Emergency Response, Standards.

The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) recently announced the approval of an American National Standard (ANS) enabling alarm companies to automatically transmit alerts to 911 centers.   Alarm vendors typically place a phone call to 911 centers when an alert sounds.

The standard, APCO/CSAA ANS 2.101.1-2008 entitled the Alarm Monitoring Company to Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) External Alarm Interface Exchange, will provide detailed technical data to software providers who support CAD systems or alarm monitoring applications concerning the common data elements and structure that shall be utilized when electronically transmitting a new alarm event from an alarm monitoring company to a PSAP.   The standards package includes process flow examples that are necessary during the hand-off of new events, new event responses, and updates to working events between the alarm monitoring company and the PSAP.

An automated standard could eliminate 32 million of these calls nationally, erasing minutes of processing time 911 call-takers need for obtaining information from alarm company operators.  The city of Richmond, Virginia USA was involved in pilot testing of the standard, and was able to eliminate 5,000 calls during its two-year time span.

Roughly 90 percent of the alarm alerts an alarm company receives never make it to 911 centers, according to the alarm company that participated in Richmond’s pilot. Phone call follow-up authentications reveal most alarms to be false. Under the new standard, once an alarm company determines an alert to be legitimate, alarm monitoring software transmits the alert to the appropriate 911 center, which then routes it to the local police, fire or emergency medical services computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system.

To view the new 9-1-1 standard, click here.   For information on other APCO standards, click here.

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