In our multimedia, data-driven world, the interfaces used in emergency control rooms are becoming outdated. So much so that it’s time to find a new solution fit for the 21st century. So says Josh Pepper, Axon’s Vice President of Product Management, who leads the development of Axon’s solutions for operations and control centres.

Emphasising the need for a new approach to dispatch, Josh says: “I’ve banned the term CAD (Computer-Aided Dispatch) on my team. It stems from the 1960s and doesn’t make any sense anymore. It’s like saying ‘computer-aided Facebook’. There is no other Facebook, or dispatch. We need a whole new category.”

Indeed, dispatch seems decades behind in terms of technology. In daily life, communication via video, links, messages and photos is the norm, but control centres still largely rely on a ticketing system as well as radio. “It’s like sucking all of that information through a straw,” as Josh puts it. “Google Maps knows where you are, but 999 doesn’t in a lot of places. Being able to text the emergency services would just be the tip of the iceberg – we should be able to video call or FaceTime them as well, which would also give them much richer information.”

Alongside the need for a more information-rich, dexterous and modern interface to help control teams to make decisions, the public expects its agencies to be supported with the best systems available. However, as this review by the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch concludes, to date, there’s been a far greater focus on emergency medical response systems. It goes on to call for the optimisation of operations systems for both police and firefighting teams. 

Anyone who’s been in a dispatch room will recognise just how important it is in helping officers on the ground respond to incidents – a fact that’s vividly underlined by a recent experiment conducted by the University of Colorado in 2019. It showed that receiving accurate information from the dispatcher can be a matter of life and death: 62% of participants fired a gun in error when primed with inaccurate information, compared to 6% when given the correct facts.  

The experiment introduces the theoretical concept of cognitive heuristics, which looks at how different factors influence decision making when under pressure. It highlights the importance of accurate information at dispatch as it shows that police officers (like everybody else) are likely to interpret new events (for example, a suspect pulling a phone from his pocket) in line with their previously constructed interpretation (in this case, the dispatcher telling the officer that a gun was likely to be present).

While dispatch hasn’t evolved in step with technology over the last two decades, our understanding of how the brain works has. With advances in neuroscience as well as psychology, we have a much better understanding of what influences our decision making. Ultimately, this can help us to devise systems that optimise our capabilities for critical thinking.

Likewise, we’re also beginning to understand the limits of our ‘cognitive load’ and how going beyond it lowers our decision-making ability and causes stress. This is relevant for dispatchers, who still largely rely on radio to assess situations which can be especially challenging when streams of messages are being sent back from multiple officers in the field. It’s a noisy medium and, in addition to trying to process other data, the pressure on operators can be extreme. In fact, stress is thought to be a strong contributor to the high staff turnover in dispatch centres. This is estimated to be between 30% and 50% a year, underlining the need to find more effective ways to help operators work.

Referring to the use of radio for dispatch, Josh says: “It’s like trying to coach a football team over the phone – it’s difficult! With our real-time operations platform we’re looking at how we can put everybody involved in the decision-making process in the field of play – albeit virtually. We’re using video streamed from CCTV, bodycams and dashcams to enable operators to see what’s happening in real time. And we’re augmenting this view with data signals that can tell the dispatcher if an officer is standing, running or wrestling or if a gun is unholstered or TASER armed.” 

It’s now 20 years since the first TETRA and APCO-25 radio systems provided nationwide voice coverage for Public Safety teams. Over the time, dispatch processes have been refined. And the advent of new technology, including mapping and resource systems, has helped improve incident response. But in many ways, control centres have not kept pace with the technology evolution, especially around taking advantage of video, sensors from data, social media and much more. For Josh and his team, the opportunity to rethink dispatch was therefore hugely exciting. 

The team has been fortunate in spending time over the last few years with many agencies and in hitting the road with officers to understand what they need from a dispatch system. They then integrated the research into their real-time operations platform, which harnesses signals from sensors in the field, enabling users to “know before it’s voiced”, to coordinate responses and communicate more effectively. 

Josh concludes: “I wanted to start this project with the end in mind, which is giving everybody involved in the response to an incident a clear picture of what is happening on the ground. Digital technology is incredibly powerful and this is a great opportunity to put it into the service of public safety. We’re confident that we can transform situational analysis in a way that supports decision making and optimises incident response without overloading operators with too much data to process.”

ARTICLE: IT’S TIME TO RE-THINK DISPATCH

It's Time to Re-think Dispatch

Our latest body camera, Axon Body 3, recently launched. We continue to hear great stories from customers as it hits the streets, but we wanted to share some of our own stories from the path to launch. Today's post covers some of the breakthrough advancements in image quality. When you're done, keep scrolling for more articles with other inside peeks from the team.

It all started with a casual conversation in the spring of 2018, on a brisk day in Tampere, Finland. It went something like this:

“Sergeant Jones* said when he's reviewing body camera footage, he wants to be able to see the details in a single frame. Right now sometimes it's blurry when people are moving too fast,” said Jason Hartford, Axon's VP of DEMS & Devices, showing a couple examples on his laptop. “He wished it could be like a photograph instead.”

“That's interesting feedback,” said Juha Alakarhu, Axon's VP of Imaging and the leader of our newly-acquired Finland imaging team.

Then they went out for mustamakkara and moved on to other topics.

Jason had nearly forgotten about the exchange until a few months later, when he was once again visiting the team in Finland, and Juha said, “Come see this. I think it will help Sergeant Jones.” He proceeded to show Jason a new algorithm the team had created that shows a single video frame in vivid detail during playback, the blurriness nearly gone. Jason's mind was blown.

Juha and his team had been quietly confronting the issue of motion blur with a series of experiments and tests, recording themselves in graffiti-covered Finnish overpasses and custom-built imaging labs filled with props to help them see how the camera would record different surfaces and colors (plus a teddy bear or two). They are wizards when it comes to imaging technology, and what began as a high-level conversation about improving video quality had turned into a little bit of magic. But they weren't just making magic for magic's sake; they were careful to focus on only the most meaningful improvements for our police service customers.

You see, usually there's a trade-off between minimizing motion blur, and the camera's performance in low light conditions, when the majority of police video is recorded (about 58% is recorded when the sun isn't out, according to our analysis). Our Finland team was able to focus on what would matter most to officers: pull off a combination of great low-light performance and incredibly clear imagery, all without negatively impacting other aspects of the camera like battery life.

The left side shows a still frame without the algorithm, and the right shows it with the algorithm in Axon Body 3. 

Speaking of low-light: in other conversations our product team has had with agency partners, the issue of lighting is always something that rises to the top. In developing the Axon Body 3, the team was especially thoughtful about which technology to select to provide the best possible low light experience for our partners. They ran through many options for things like the image sensor and optics, as well as image processing and tuning. See, Body 3 had to perform better than previous models, but not better than the human eye, as officers don't always have the benefit of watching the captured video, and have to rely on what they see and perceive at the time. So the team spent a lot of time a lot of time testing the camera in different low light conditions and comparing the video to what they could see with their own eyes. Ultimately, the team went with the combination that was going to work best for typical police service conditions and produce a realistic presentation of the scene. So although you can certainly use your Body 3 for sightseeing around Tampere, it was purpose-built for police scenarios like going from a dark exterior to a home interior, adjusting quickly like the human eye and clearly capturing the details of the environment at hand.

Again, the left shows motion blur and greater darkness, while the right shows more detail with greater clarity of the Axon Body 3. 

In short, the quality of evidence that will be captured by Axon Body 3 is higher than ever before. That can mean the difference between a criminal being rightly convicted vs. wrongly set free, or an officer being celebrated as a hero vs. castigated as a bad actor. So while it may have started as just a brief conversation, we take this stuff incredibly seriously and are looking forward to hearing how better video impacts your officers and communities. 

So please, keep the feedback coming on this or any other Axon products you use. You never know what side comment or casual mention will inspire some truly magical advancements.

Axon Body 3, which will be launched in later 2019, makes breakthrough advancements in image quality that includes minimizing motion blurs and providing the best possible low light experience.

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It's Time to Re-think Dispatch

The Making of Axon Body 3: Video Magic in Tampere, Finland