What if your CAD Dies?

1
What if your CAD Dies?

• Brent Finster, Communications Manager, Contra
  Costa Fire Emergency Communications Center
• and
• Raj Nagaraj, VP Engineering,
• Deccan International

2
Overview

• Background
• The challenge for a CAD backup system
• Partial solution BARB Run Card Builder
• BARB as backup system Limitations
• Solution DiVa (Dispatch Validator)
• CCFECC experience with DiVa
• Applicability to other comm. centers

3
Deccan International

• Decision Support Tools For Fire EMS
• Address Strategic and Real-time needs
• Strong in both analytical and Fire/EMS field
  experience
• Ten years in business
• 90 clients in U.S and Canada
• Turnkey approach
• www.deccanintl.com

4
Contra Costa Regional Fire Communications Center
(CCRECC)
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Contra Costa Regional Fire Communications Center
(CCRECC)

• Multi-agency fire EMS Dispatch Center
• Six agencies
• Thirteen cities/towns

6
Background

• Contra Costa County Fire contracted for a new CAD
  System with TriTech
• Contract included Deccan products
• BARB (Run card builder)
• CAD Analyst/ADAM (Station location analysis)
• LiveMUM (move-up recommendations)

7
Background (Contd)

• Previous CAD used static run progressions based
  on Fire Station Location

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Background (Contd)

• Backup system was printouts from the old CAD
  system

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Background (Contd)

• TriTech CAD recommends Closest Resources using
  GPS/Automatic Vehicle Location
• No opportunity to evaluate both static run orders
  and AVL closest resources with CAD
• Committed to go with closest resources

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Requirement

• Backup system that would allow for a dispatcher
  to evaluate the static run order (just as if all
  closest resources were in their home stations) if
  the CAD or AVL sub-system were to fail
• A tool to validate AVL based CAD recommendations

11
BARB

• Box-Area Run Card Builder
• Automates Building of Static Run Cards
• Station Orders or Unit Orders
• Run Cards can be imported into CAD
• Running Routes using BARB
• Run Cards for Special Events
• Street QA Utility

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BARB For Disasters
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BARB As Backup System Limitations

• BARB Export to Excel
• Too cumbersome
• 65,000 rows and 78 columns! Phew!!!

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BARB As Backup System Limitations (Contd)

• Non-dispatcher friendly
• Slow processing of large amount of data
• Unable to run on dispatcher work station
• Non-user friendly - does not allow wrong street
  spellings

15
BARB As Backup System Limitations (Contd)

• Next Idea
• Access rather than Excel
• Contact to Deccan to build a front end for BARB
• Directly enter a location for search

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Solution Dispatch Validator!

• Use BARB output to DiVa to make it more dispatch
  friendly
• Make data processing faster
• Make it available to run on dispatcher stations
• Permit wrong street spellings
• Incorporate the functionality of BARB with
  user-friendly GUI

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DiVa Features Capabilities

• Can be run on dispatcher work station
• Call processing time is faster using DiVa
• Allows a one-click zoom to the address provided
• Allows wrong street spellings
• Alias can be set up for street names

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DiVa Features Capabilities (Contd)

• Allows for abbreviations and short forms for
  street names
• Allows for road network validation
• Takes into account one-ways, road and bridge
  closures, dead ends
• Provides for an electronic back-up book

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DiVa Features Capabilities (Contd)

• Displays cross street names and other major
  arterials so a user can get good reference of the
  zoomed in location.

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DiVa Experience At CCRECC

• DiVa In Use

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DiVa Experience At CCRECC (Contd)

• CAD Backup eliminate shelves of paper
• Fire Prevention 1st due areas
• Insurance Company inquiries
• Incident operations in the field
• Communications Support Resource

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DiVa Experience At CCRECC (Contd)

1. As pick lists for disaster response and area wide
   resources not capable with CAD

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Applicability To Other Comm. Centers

• All Comm. Centers need CAD backup
• AVL or Not, CAD backup needed
• Backup books too unwieldy
• Map based software enables instant lookup
• Address verification capabilities vital for fast
  lookup
• Unit orders facilitate direct dispatch validation

24
Questions