Tag: next generation 911

Guernsey County in Ohio selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Carbyne to help transition its 911 call center from analog to a digital interface that is smartphone-friendly and allows operators to communicate with callers via live video. Read this blog post to learn more.

AWS today announced 13 startup companies selected to participate in the inaugural AWS GovTech Accelerator. Launched in June at the AWS Summit in Washington, D.C., the Accelerator supports government technology (GovTech) startups as they develop innovative solutions enabling justice and public safety agencies to better serve their communities.

To help government technology (GovTech) startups build solutions that enable government agencies to better serve their communities, AWS is launching its first AWS GovTech Accelerator. This inaugural program is now accepting applications from startups interested in leveraging cloud-based resources to accelerate innovation. AWS wants to help startups develop solutions that address the needs of government agencies, with the first cohort focused on justice and public safety organizations including courts, corrections, emergency services, and law enforcement. Applications open today and close Monday, July 10, 2023.

AWS is helping the 911 community mitigate the impact of staffing shortages on call wait times by providing 911 centers the means to automate the receipt and resolution of designated non-emergency calls. Learn how the Jefferson County Communications Center Authority is already seeing improvements using an AWS solution, and discover the solution’s components that support 911 centers in handling non-emergency calls at scale.

Natural disasters are devastating, often resulting in loss of life, massive property damage, and damage to the critical infrastructure that powers emergency services. This can prompt public sector organizations to consider building more resilient infrastructure. Such was the case for the 911 system in Livingston Parish, Louisiana, an agency that dispatches for 21 public safety agencies including law enforcement, fire, and emergency medical services, and averages over 325 calls for service per day. After a major flood in 2016 knocked out their 911 system, they worked with AWS Partner TailorBuilt Solutions, LLC. to use AWS to become resilient against disaster, reducing service interruptions and improving response times.

Carbyne, an AWS justice and public safety customer and partner, provides 911 call handling systems, offering a cloud-native software as a service (SaaS) platform. Although any public safety answering points (PSAPs) can benefit from Carbyne’s cloud-powered solution, certain regions with hostile, remote terrain can especially benefit from improved caller location and the ability to put eyes on the scene. This is crucial, for example, in situations where people are lost or hurt in the desert, and in desert-heavy counties that form the Rio Grande Council of Governments (RGCOG). Using Carbyne improved RioCOG’s caller location from an accuracy of a few miles to within roughly 10 meters on over 85% of emergency calls.

Emergencies and national disasters can strike at any moment. And with the change in how people communicate – from the internet to cell phones and more – emergency response systems need to be modernized to meet the immediate urgent needs of constituents. Amazon Web Services (AWS) supports many disaster recovery architectures, from those built for smaller workloads to enterprise solutions that enable rapid failover at scale. AWS provides a set of cloud-based disaster recovery services that enable fast recovery of your IT infrastructure and data.