Group: alt.firefighters Date: Sun, May 28, 2000, 2:09pm (EDT+13:30) From: perisonr@dingoblue.net.au (Rex Pearson) Re: Do you think Fire,police & Ambulance controls should be seperate?

Hi - The Northern Territory Police, Fire and Ambulance combined their dispatch centers in Darwin on the 12th May 1999. There were a few teething problems at the initial cutover but all is operating in a far superior fashion today than it was 2 years ago in the seperate dispatch centers.

The CAD is intergraph with links to the PROMIS business system. The radio system is Centracom Gold - with analogue repeaters. This is currently being upgraded to APCO25 mixed mode with encryption on all of the digital systems. The telephone system is a Lucent Prologix ACD. 000 (911) calls to the Police system overflow to the Fire operator and vice versa, there have been no operational problems in this workflow.

We are currently installing ProQA on the Ambulance and Fire systems and will allow the Ambulance and Fire calls to route to either operator when one is busy.

Hope this helps with the discussion. As the first in Australia to operate a joint centre it has been a success - all agencies agree on this point. The next stage in the operation is to add a virtual call centre in Alice Springs and install the CAD and digital radio there and allow both centers to operate together as a seemless dispatch centre, this is due to commence later this year.

All the best - Rex Pearson - Radio and Electronics - NT Police, Fire and Emergency Services