Case Study: Fire Service

Profile

This client is a rural fire service for one of Australia’s larger states. Their area of responsibility is control of fire emergencies in the smaller towns and country areas across the whole state.

Technical Issues/Challenges

A system was required which could replace an aging hard-wired, public exchange-based alerting system which was being phased out by the supplier. It needed to be a turnkey system with built-in redundancy and the ability to handle the worst possible scenarios.

Ease of use by volunteer firemen and simple updates of team members were highly desirable features. The system had to do at least what the previous one did, but with the possibility of adding further features over time.

Solution

ALERTS (ADTEC Linked Emergency Response Telephone System) met all the key requirements and then some.

ALERTS works by someone phoning a specific number which triggers the system. ALERTS then burst dials all the numbers for the emergency team and on the entry of a simple PIN, places that member into a telephone conference.

Each team member can have up to 4 contact numbers with a variable priority, so the system can work its way through until it finds the person, no matter where they are.

Unlike the previous system, ALERTS is very easy to update as all numbers are held in a central database. The database then updates two mirrored systems, each holding all the relevant emergency team details.

Benefits

Over a period of 12 months from implementation, the client's costs are expected to be halved, even including call costs. Being able to update teams on the fly means far better use of resources and the fact that weary volunteers can 'have a life' even when on call.

Further benefits include the ability to run standard management teleconferences and the future addition of pager messaging to the system.

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