Sensors, Drones and Artificial Intelligence at the Forefront at IWCE

With all the new technology at our disposal, it seems counterintuitive that 911 dispatch times have increased by as much as 10 percent in some areas, but it's true. Dispatching was traditionally a reactive task, but modern technology and all its sources of information has complicated that task, foisting on 911 call-takers streams of information, some of it accurate, some of it inaccurate and second- and third-hand and forcing call-takers to decide on its value. With all this information cluttering up the system, what's needed is a process of curation to synthesize that information. That's the key to Next Gen 911, said Lawrence Hicks, vice president of engineering for InterTalk Critical Information Systems, in a keynote address at the International Wireless Communications Expo (IWCE) in Las Vegas Thursday. "'911' is a motto for'seconds count,'" Hicks said, but 911 dispatchers are suffering from information overload from a "fire hose" of information from different sources.