Intrado integrates ShotSpotter technology into 911 solution
Public-safety agencies will have the opportunity to access gunshot information from ShotSpotter’s gunshot-location system in real time over an Intrado next-generation 911 platform, as the companies announced a next-generation partnership this week.
With ShotSpotter being certified in Intrado’s next-generation partner program, automated notification and location of a gun being fired is expected to help first-response agencies react quickly—an important capability, because more than 50% of all gunshots are not reported to a public-safety answering point (PSAP) via the 911 system.
Currently, the ShotSpotter and Intrado systems are on separate platforms, meaning a call taker receiving a 911 call about a gunshot incident may not have the benefit of the ShotSpotter information. By integrating the two systems, a call taker on Intrado’s next-generation system can have access to the ShotSpotter information, said Brian Davenport, vice president of product management for Intrado.
“This allows us to fully integrate the two, making it much easier for the call taker and the decision maker in the public safety answering point to see the information and — more importantly — be able to associate that information with a specific incident or call that might be coming in then,” he said in an interview.
Davenport said integrating the ShotSpotter system would require a software enhancement to Intrado’s next-generation platform. Although the ShotSpotter integration marks the first such announcement Intrado has made, it should not be the last, as the 911 vendor’s standard interface has been designed to make such monitoring information accessible in PSAPs in the future, he said.
“In today’s world, there’s not a lot of integration between the alarm companies and the public-safety agencies, for all kinds of reasons,” Davenport said. “Going forward, Intrado’s advanced 911 data services are designed to create a standard interface mechanism for companies like … ShotSpotter to be able to feed their alarm-type data directly into our platform and to be able to deliver it to the PSAP in a way that not only is easily understood but very usable for the call take to do something appropriate with it.”
ShotSpotter CEO Ralph Clark said the partnership with Intrado is the result of months of development and testing.
“Working together, we will enable public safety agencies to easily incorporate real-time, sensor-generated alerts and accumulated incident data as a part of their operational process,” Clark said in a prepared statement. “This information will result in a greater number of firearm confiscations, arrests and deterrence of criminal activity, making our communities and cities safer.”
Davenport said information from myriad sensor devices can be incorporated directly into the 911 system via Intrado’s interface, including possibility of PSAPs receiving an automatic alert from an individual’s health monitor in the case of a heart attack.
“Really, the sky is the limit here,” he said. “Our advanced 911 data services would allow any company that has the ability to provide value-added data to a public-safety center to deliver their information via our system.”