The below article was featured in Public Safety Communications.
Telecommunicators in the nation’s emergency communications centers (ECCs) have a critical job. They must field emergency calls and capture relevant information — a task often made more difficult by language barriers and caller panic — and then input that information into the center’s computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system and dispatch the appropriate response.
All while lives hang in the balance and every second matters.The National Emergency Number Association estimates that 9-1-1 centers field about 240 million emergency calls annually. Security Industry Alarm Coalition and anecdotal telecommunicator estimates suggest that 10% to 20% of those calls are generated by commercial and residential alarm systems. Nearly all of those are received manually from a human call to a 10-digit, non-emergency phone line. Every alarm or sensor activation will generate between one and five phone calls between an alarm-monitoring center and the ECC — a time-consuming process susceptible to human error and an inability to share rich media that would enhance situational awareness for a better-informed response.
Indeed, the interactions between an ECC and an alarm-monitoring center can take three minutes and sometimes more. Two decades ago, the FCC conducted a study of emergency incidents in the Salt Lake City area. By extrapolating the findings, the FCC concluded that about 10,000 additional lives could be saved each year for every one-minute reduction in emergency response time.1
The current system of handling alarm and sensor-generated calls through manual processes poses a significant challenge for the public safety communications community, because it creates an emergency response bottleneck. This manual process is slow, prone to errors and inefficient. The delay caused by these calls can be critical, as every second counts in an emergency. Fortunately, a solution offers a more efficient and reliable way to manage these calls.
WHAT IS ASAP SERVICE?
The Automated Secure Alarm Protocol (ASAP) was born in 2011 from a collaborative effort between APCO International and The Monitoring Association (TMA). This public-private partnership aimed to streamline emergency response by reducing the reliance on manual phone calls between alarm-monitoring companies and 9-1-1 centers. The core of ASAP is the ASAP-to-PSAP standard, jointly developed by APCO and TMA, which facilitates direct communication between alarm-monitoring systems and 9-1-1 centers. This machine-to-machine interaction eliminates the need for voice calls, freeing up phone lines and reducing the burden on telecommunicators.
The ASAP Service has received solid support from the alarm-monitoring sector. Major alarm-monitoring companies such as ADT, Securitas, Brinks and Vivint have integrated it into their solutions — as have numerous third-party monitoring centers — to the degree that about 80% of the alarm-and sensor generated call volume today is being processed by the platform, TMA President Steve Butkovich said during a panel discussion regarding ASAP service that was part of the 2024 Conference for Advancing the Public Sector (CAPS). CAPS is a virtual conference presented in September by consulting firm Mission Critical Partners (MCP). Meanwhile, several major CAD vendors, including Hexagon, Motorola, Versaterm, Central Square, Intellitech, Tyler Technologies and Northrop Grumman have also integrated ASAP Service into their CAD solutions.
ASAP Service leverages this standard as well as the Alarm Verification Scoring standard (ANSI/TMA AVS-01) developed through collaboration between TMA, the Partnership for Priority Verified Alarm Response (PPV2024 AR), public safety representatives and others in the security industry. The concept behind AVS-01 is like the one developed by the telematics industry for vehicle crash-notification systems (e.g., GM OnStar, Ford Sync). Such systems gather data generated by a variety of vehicle sensors that then are weighed using an algorithm specially created for this purpose. The result is a score that predicts the severity of the crash and the likelihood of life-threatening injuries.
The AVS-01 standard identifies five scoring levels to help prioritize the severity of an alarm or sensor-generated notification:
- Level 0: No call for service.
- Level 1: Call for service with limited information.
- Level 2: Call for service with confirmed or highly probable human presence with unknown intent.
- Level 3: Call for service with confirmed threat to property.
- Level 4: Call for service with confirmed threat to life.
Let’s say that an intruder-alarm notification occurs. It might be based on a user error, which could be as benign as a homeowner not properly arming the system. However, if a sensor in a home determines that glass was broken, that would indicate a higher probability of an attempted break in.
Butkovich emphasized that AVS-01 delivers two key benefits: enhanced responder safety and escalated response. Regarding the latter, Butkovich said that an alarm center might have dozens of alarm notifications in their queue, and prior to implementing ASAP service, "they all look the same. With (AVS-01) alarm scoring, you can now focus on those that are most important."
Right now, work is underway on a new standard that will complement AVS-01. TMAATN-O1 Monitoring Center Notification of Active Threat Detection standard is expected to be released soon, according to Butkovich. Butkovich said "90% of the standard" consists of a glossary of terms because there’s a lot of nomenclature inconsistency across the nation’s 9-1-1 centers.
"If there’s an active shooter incident, does that mean bullets were fired or somebody has a weapon? Establishing consistent methods of communication to deliver the appropriate response is always important," Butkovich said.
REAL-WORLD IMPACTS
Hamilton County (Tennessee) Emergency Communications District (ECD) serves 336,000 residents over 542 square miles, as well as tens of thousands of visitors annually. The ECD supports 9-1-1 call taking and emergency response services for eight law enforcement organizations, including the Chattanooga Police Department. Prior to implementing ASAP Service, the district’s eight primary ECCs manually fielded up to 1,500 alarm-and-sensor generated calls via nonemergency administrative lines each month. Now they don’t.
"That’s 1,500 calls that go directly into the CAD system — there are no more calls back and forth with the alarm-monitoring center," said Jeff Carney, the ECD’s executive director, who also participated in the CAPS panel discussion.
Besides relieving some of the burden on telecommunicators, ASAP Service also improves the accuracy of the information used to determine the response because the information generated by the alarm-monitoring center is filtered through the 9-1-1 center’s geographic information system and verified.
"So, we know that the address is accurate — there’s no possibility of mispronunciations or misspellings," Carney said. "For example, we have a town called Ooltewah — we used to love to listen to the alarm companies try to pronounce that," Carney said.
Another vital benefit of ASAP Service is realized whenever a major event occurs such as a severe storm.
"When you have a storm come through, on top of all the weather-related stuff, we always get inundated with alarms — as the power goes on and off, it’s triggering those alarms," he said. "All those calls go away with [the ASAP Service]. … So, my telecommunicators are available to answer other emergency calls while the alarms are still getting handled."
WHAT’S NEXT?
Last June, TMA and MCP announced a multiyear managed services agreement to further develop, operate, support and promote ASAP Service. The first step is for MCP to help accelerate deployment of ASAP Service in ECCs nationwide by removing complexities and smoothing the implementation process. The goal is to increase ASAP Service’s penetration to the degree that it is processing alarm and- sensor generated calls for 80% of the U.S. population by 2028.
"I see a future when an alarm call being transmitted verbally to a 9-1-1 center is a thing of the past," John Chiaramonte, president of MCP’s consulting division, said during the CAPS session.
"Let’s say that I get a hold-up alarm — I’d like to see a link that shows me a camera at the register that triggered the alarm so I can see if the guy has a weapon. … The same thing on the fire side. If I get a smoke-detector activation, give me a camera closest to the alarm that triggered — let me see if we see smoke inside the building," Carney said. "All that would be very, very helpful."
Reference
1 FCC Fact Sheet, Location-Based Routing for Wireless 911 Calls, PS Docket No. 18-64, pages 24-25.
