BACKGROUND

1. Field of the Description

The present description relates, in general, to emergency dispatch systems and processes, and, more particularly, to a real-time crime center system that is cloud-based and configured to provide unique payloads of data and video to emergency dispatch centers and to emergency responders including police department personnel, firefighters, and the like.

2. Relevant Background

A dispatcher is a communications worker who receives and transmits information to coordinate operations of other personnel and vehicles carrying out a service. A number of organizations, including police and fire departments and emergency medical services, use dispatchers to relay information, direct personnel, and coordinate their operations. An emergency dispatcher, also known as a public safety dispatcher or a 9-1-1 dispatcher, receives calls from individuals who require emergency services including police services, firefighting, and emergency medical services.

Once information is obtained from the caller, the dispatcher activates the appropriate services necessary to respond to the nature of the call for help. The dispatcher also obtains and relays pertinent information to the field units to help ensure the adequacy and safety of the response, and, in the process, the dispatcher is generating a dispatcher incident narrative that may later be reviewed. Emergency dispatchers may also use preapproved protocols to talk a caller or bystander through lifesaving medical procedures such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation, childbirth, and first aid.

Presently, law enforcement and other agencies rely heavily upon the skill and experience of the human dispatcher to quickly analyze each call for assistance and to respond correctly and quickly to dispatch proper personnel and equipment for each incident. The responding personnel (i.e., “responders” or “dispatched personnel”) may, in some cases, be provided or call up a map of the location of the incident, but, otherwise, they often are only provided information obtained by the dispatcher who took the call. As a result, most responders have to approach the incident scene with an often-inadequate amount of information about the incident, which can result in unsafe situations for the responders and for the people involved in the incident.

SUMMARY

The present description provides a cloud-based digital media payload dispatch system that is configured to support both emergency dispatchers and emergency responders responding to an incident requiring assistance. The new dispatch system is “cloud-based” in that it provides a central hub or repository for gathering live video streams and data streams that are processed to fuse them together to provide a map-based interface for the dispatcher to access via a desktop or other computing station at a central agency location and for the responders in the field to access via vehicle-mounted or portable client devices. The dispatch system processes the video and data streams to generate a dispatch directed payload that includes data and video relevant to the identified incident and that can be readily communicated (due to its reduced or controlled size) to and utilized by field responders to make their response more effective and to increase both the safety of the responders and those involved in the incident.

The cloud-based dispatch system is designed to address problems with prior dispatching systems including fragmentation, lack of access, inefficiency, and affordability. With regard to fragmentation, the dispatch directed payload is configured to pull together previously disparate and fragmented data streams and to fuse or combine them into a coherent picture that can be used by real-time emergency centers (e.g., by center personnel such as dispatchers) and responders in the field (e.g., by police officers) to respond more efficiently. The dispatch system addresses lack of access by unlocking previously inaccessible resources such as private camera streams and non-edge devices (with “edge devices” being those providing an entry point into enterprise or service provider core networks such as those of a metropolitan city or agency network) and integrates their outputs into the dispatch directed payload provided in the map-based interface. With regard to inefficiency, the dispatch directed payload is enhanced with richer data, which improves response times and enables the user (e.g., a first responder) to gain a degree of situational awareness that was not possible with prior solutions. As to affordability, the dispatch system has developed and deployed technology in a new way so as to radically reduce costs of implementation, and it represents a significant step forward for cloud-based public safety technology.

Unlike traditionally federated or fused video and Internet of Things (IoT) systems, the new dispatch system does not require an expensive hardware overhaul in order to function. This means that a law enforcement or other emergency response agency can deploy more functionality in less time and at a much lower cost. The interface and data delivery provided by the new dispatch system represent a redesign of law enforcement (or other incident response) information delivery systems as the system effectively combines multiple streams of video and data into a cohesive whole, thereby creating greater efficiencies at scale. Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms can be implemented within the dispatch system to enable video and data to be analyzed faster and/or to create automation that was not previously available.

More particularly, an emergency dispatch system is provided for creating a map-based interface for delivering a dispatch or incident specific digital media payload to client devices (such as a dispatcher's client device or responders' client devices). The system includes a dispatch processing hub communicatively linked via a communications network with a plurality of client devices. The system includes memory or data storage (e.g., cloud-based servers or the like) storing data from data sources and video from video sources. On the dispatch processing hub (which may be provided on one-to-many cloud-based computing devices), a map interface generator operates to generate a map-based interface for display upon a display device of each of the plurality of client devices, and the map-based interface provides access to a subset of the video from the video sources and to a subset of the data from the data sources. Further, on the dispatch processing hub, a dispatch payload generator functions to create a digital payload accessible by, or for delivery to (such as in response to a user clicking an icon or link in the map-based interface), the plurality of the client devices including the subset of the video and the subset of the data both being determined by the dispatch payload generator as being related to an incident call received by an emergency agency system.

In some implementations of the system, the data storage stores a registry map defining cameras available in the video sources to provide the video and further stores associated locations within a geographic region of each of the cameras. The dispatch payload generator may then determine a set of the cameras being within image-capture range of a location of an incident associated with the incident call, and video streams from each of the set of cameras are provided in the subset of the video in the payload. In such implementations, the dispatch payload generator identifies an orientation of the set of the cameras within image-capture range and creates a subset of the cameras in the set of the cameras being focused on or toward the location of the incident. Further, video streams from each of the subset of the cameras can be provided in the subset of the video in the payload.

In some embodiments, the dispatch payload generator processes the subset of the video to detect objects and, in response, generates a set of searchable object detection data. In these and other cases, the subset of the data includes geolocations of responders in a geographic region including a location of the incident, and the map-based interface includes indicators of one or more of the geolocations. The subset of the data may include at least one building floor plan for a building at or proximate to a location of an incident associated with the incident call, and the map-based interface includes a link to the at least one building floor plan. In some implementations of the system, the dispatch payload generator processes a dispatcher narrative of the incident call using natural language processing (NLP) to determine a location and other specific details of an incident associated with the incident call.

The hub may be configured so that the payload is stored in the data storage in an evidence vault to be accessible by an identifier for an incident associated with the incident call. Also, a plurality of the video sources may include cameras or networks of cameras, and the system further may include a dispatch platform appliance coupled with the cameras or networks of cameras to communicatively link the cameras or networks of cameras with the dispatch processing hub, whereby video streams from the cameras or networks of cameras are automatically fed over the communications network to the data processing hub.

The dispatch payload generator may employ a rules-based engine to generate the payload. Then, the subset of the data and the subset of the video can be selected based on at least one of a responder assigned to the incident call, a mode of data receipt associated with the responder assigned to the incident call, and a role within an emergency agency of the responder assigned to the incident call. In some cases, the dispatch payload generator can perform at least one of: (a) analysis of the video with artificial intelligence to identify the subset of the video as being related to the incident call; and (b) analysis of Internet-of-Things (IoT) information gathered by the dispatch processing hub to identify a set of IoT information related to the incident call.

