CASE STUDY
MINNESOTA’S TRANSITION TO NG911 PROVIDES A LOOK INTO THE FUTURE
As states adopt NG911, Minnesota offers a roadmap for change
A ugust 1, 2007. A date that few first responders in the Twin Cities area will forget. At the height of rush hour, the I-35 bridge over the Mississippi River in down- town Minneapolis collapsed, creat- ing a chaotic emergency scene with vehicles crashing into the water, onto the riverbanks, and into a rail yard, stranding injured motorists on slabs of broken roadway and resulting in 13 deaths. “Within minutes of the bridge collaps- ing, the commercial wireless network was completely saturated,” recalls Dana Wahlberg, director of the state’s Emergency Communication Networks. Emergency responders were unable to use their wireless devices to coordi- nate their response or contact the 911 center. “The need for critical com- munication between responders using wireless devices was significantly compromised,” Wahlberg says. Even so, first responders earned high marks, relying on Minnesota’s statewide land mobile radio system to continue com- municating from the field with 911. Eleven years later, technology has dramatically improved and Minnesota is taking full advantage of the advance- ments. The first step was recogniz- ing the importance of upgrading the 911 system serving the state’s Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) from an analog network to a digital network as a first step toward migrating to Next Generation 911 (NG911).
achieved a milestone with the imple- mentation of text to 911 statewide. Enhanced location accuracy is a more complex statewide undertaking. The process is expected to take through 2019. Since 2015, Minnesota has been using geospatial mapping to create a statewide dataset, which will be shared with all public safety entities so that a call’s location can be more exactly pinpointed and routed to the correct PSAP. Paramedics are impatient for this NG911 feature, which will shave minutes off their search for a patient. “That’s a huge game changer for EMS,” says Joe Glaccum, Director of Ambu- lance Services Technology at North Memorial Healthcare in Robbins- dale, a Minneapolis suburb. “If you’re calling from a cell phone now, finding the patient isn’t guaranteed. NG911 creates an environment in which we’d have a much better chance of finding that dot on the map.” The full potential of NG911 won’t be realized until dispatchers can receive video, photos and rich digital data from the public. Although the core technol- ogy is in place, NG911 experts esti- mate it could take years to establish standards and protocols for securely transferring and retaining such data from the public. For responders like Brian LaCroix, President of Allina Health Emergency Medical Services, these transforma-
NG911 holds the promise of a more coordinated response not only during large-scale events but also for daily emergencies such as car crashes, al- lowing EMS and all other responders to work more effectively and efficiently. Minnesota began implementing NG911 in 2011. By early 2014, the state deployed the digital network to all PSAPs, putting Minnesota among the first states to begin the transition to a more stable and resilient digital net- work. If PSAPs become overwhelmed with an influx of 911 calls or a situation prevents them from answering calls, the NG911 platform offers the flexibil- ity to reroute them to alternate PSAPs so that 911 calls are answered. Putting the core NG911 infrastructure in place was just the start. It created what Wahlberg describes as the “in- formation superhighway.” Over time, NG911 will allow people to communi- cate with 911 the same way they use smartphones and other mobile devices to communicate with each other. Initially, the public saw little change. PSAPs could transfer 911 calls be- tween one another over the network and include a call back number and location information. Behind the scenes, state officials continued working on two key features that would ride on the NG911 informa- tion highway—texting and improved location accuracy using a geospatial dataset. By late 2017, Minnesota
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