A unified approach to public safety response

The challenge

Critical to keeping Richmond’s quarter of a million residents, as well as visitors, safe, the Richmond Department of Emergency Communications, Preparedness, and Response (DECPR) in Virginia is one of the busiest emergency communications centers in the state – answering more than 450,000 calls for service every year. 

The PSAP for Richmond’s E-911 telephone provides call-taking and dispatching for a citywide network of departments/entities, including the Richmond Police Department, the Richmond Fire Department and even Richmond Animal Care & Control. A longtime customer, it leverages a growing suite of Hexagon technologies, including computer-aided dispatch (CAD) and mobile and analytics solutions, to dispatch for multiple organizations and agencies across the city. Before Hexagon’s solutions were implemented many years ago, there were multiple systems across these different departments, which made sharing critical information and coordinating response efforts challenging.

The solution

Now, calls for the departments are routed through the centralized system at the DECPR. This kind of enhanced coordination was critical during a 2023 incident that occurred at the VCU Medical Center. The CAD solution was able to interface with the VCU CAD system, which facilitated rapid and seamless information sharing for a faster response.

The DECPR is always focused on new innovations for enhancing its public safety mission. These include the ability for residents to text or place video calls to 911, and a call-back feature that automatically calls a resident back if he or she has hung up or been disconnected during an emergency call. It is also exploring the use of AI solutions for handling non-emergency calls.

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