November 7, 2001
New system to Increase Call-Handling Capacity and Improve Response Times Motorola (NYSE: MOT) has been awarded a 7-million pound ($10MUSD) contract by the London Fire Authority to replace and enhance its command and control emergency response system, across 112 fire stations in the Greater London Region. The contract has been awarded to the Integrated Solutions Division of Motorola's Commercial Government and Industrial Solutions Sector and will be implemented by Printrak, a wholly owned subsidiary.
London Fire Authority has invested in new technology to cope with the rising demand for the Brigade's services, and to maintain and improve its emergency response time capabilities across its 1,587km(2) territory. In 2000, London Fire Control Officers received 48% more calls and handled 23% more incidents -- 160,000 in total -- compared to 1990. To ensure the technology can cope with future demands, the new command and control system has been scaled to handle 1 million calls per year and a peak call rate of 600 calls an hour.
The system has also been designed to improve the processing times for handling and logging incoming calls, increase the speed of assessing both an incident and the most appropriate means of response, and strengthen the swiftness of resource deployment. These process improvements are made possible through Printrak's ProCAD(TM) computer-aided dispatch system. At every stage of the process, the ProCAD component helps to intelligently assess and manage a situation. It can help response decisions to be reached more quickly, thereby shaving vital seconds off the time taken to handle and deal with an incident.
The state of the art technology being deployed by the London Fire Authority will be implemented into both a primary and a fall back control room and will deliver functionality to 40 operator positions. Each position will have telephony, radio and integrated geographic information system (GIS) access. They will also be connected directly to the mobilizing equipment (including scrolling displays and printers), in all fire stations in the Greater London Region, via the command and control system wide area network and radio links. This linkage, provided and managed by the command and control system, will improve the speed and clarity of information dissemination to fire crews about the location and type of incident they are going to.
Fire Authority Chair, Val Shawcross said: "We're investing in a new generation of computer-based systems that will enhance the already-impressive speed of call handling and emergency response for which the Brigade is renowned. This prestigious project combines the latest technologies in computing, digitized mapping and communications to ensure we continue to provide a high quality service to Londoners for many years to come."
The new command and control system meets the immediate needs of the Fire Authority for the effective mobilization of its 1210 vehicle resources. It also offers further possible enhancements in organizational processes, by providing a framework in which to mobilize the organin, should an incident occur. Wireless access and updating to these centrally held information resources would allow routine amendments to be made directly by fire staff in the field, without having to return to a station to enter paper captured inputs. By working with and updating one centrally held set of data only, emergency response and resource deployment will always be made on the basis of the most up-to-date information, regardless of who in the organization has made the input.
Tim Allerton, Sales Director of Motorola's Integrated Solutions Division, said: "Public safety customers are beginning to explore the possibilities of wirelessly enabling their intelligence gathering activities and see the benefits of linking these to their command and control system. Motorola is extremely well placed to support organizations that want to realize these operational advantages through its ability to combine its market- leading wireless experience, with its own portfolio of public safety information management solutions."
Work on implementing the new London Fire command and control system begins this year with completion planned for late 2003.
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