Fire department taps Tiburon for computer-aided dispatch, records management
Hanover, MD — June 1, 2004 — CompuDyne Corp. a provider of security products, integration and technology for the public security markets, said today that it has completed the installation of a new computer-aided dispatch (CAD) and records management system (RMS) for the Kansas City Fire Department.
The system is the first phase of an $8.6 million contract to provide new public safety systems for the city's police and fire departments. CompuDyne's Public Safety & Justice unit, Tiburon, provides automated public safety and justice systems for law enforcement, fire and rescue, corrections, and justice environments.
The new CAD system replaces an outdated system the Kansas City Fire Department was previously using, and should allow dispatchers to respond to and manage citizen's requests for fire and rescue services more efficiently.
"Installing a reliable system is critical to any public safety operation," said Rick Brisbin, Project manager for Kansas City. "We have not experienced any downtime since we took the system live."
Brisbin said a mapping component pinpoints the exact location of a citizen's call for service and gives dispatchers the ability to quickly assess the location of the incident and provide responding firefighters directions or details of the building, if required.
Additionally, the new CAD system can automatically pinpoint the caller's location, recommend the appropriate apparatus to respond, alert the fire stations and track the details of the fire response.
Records automation is not new to the Kansas City Fire Department, which currently processes more than 50,000 fire and rescue incident reports annually. Yet, the department needed a more robust, fully integrated system to centralize and automate fire incident, personnel and training, and equipment inspections information that used to reside on separate, disparate databases or in paper files.
During a subsequent phase of this multi-million dollar project, devices that track the exact location of a vehicle and assist in determining the shortest route to an incident will be installed in Kansas City's fire apparatus.
Later in the project, Tiburon and Kansas City will implement a CAD, RMS and Automated Field Reporting system for the Police Department. "The installation of the fire dispatch and records management system is the beginning of an enterprise-wide public safety automation system for the city's police and fire departments," said Brisbin. "Sharing information between police and fire is crucial to rapid responses, and is the big payoff of this new system for the departments."
