Baldwin County Ditches Automated 911 Dispatch

[KV4PM]

"Baldwin County 911 has returned to having people communicate emergency locations to first responders. The department had been using an automated, computer-generated dispatch voice. The automated voice was supposed to improve communication, but Director Kristi Stamnes says sometimes it would mispronounce street names to first responders."

From NBC 15. And I say "Good riddance."

 

[TomServo]

I saw this on the news, too. It didn't bother me that much but then it's what I first heard when I got into scanning again after an absence. I've heard some other automated systems like the one in Austin, TX and it was horrific. Fast, clipped speech and thin audio. Yuck.

The mispronounced names were definitely an issue but that should have been an easy fix by programming the names phonetically in the back end, but perhaps this system didn't have that ability.

To be honest, though, I hear the human dispatchers mangle names all the time. They also regularly flub station numbers which could be an issue if they don't catch it in time.

 

[sadave]

I saw this on the news, too. It didn't bother me that much but then it's what I first heard when I got into scanning again after an absence. I've heard some other automated systems like the one in Austin, TX and it was horrific. Fast, clipped speech and thin audio. Yuck.

The mispronounced names were definitely an issue but that should have been an easy fix by programming the names phonetically in the back end, but perhaps this system didn't have that ability.

To be honest, though, I hear the human dispatchers mangle names all the time. They also regularly flub station numbers which could be an issue if they don't catch it in time.

Here is a link to the news story. I also echo your comments about fixing mispronounced names and errors by the human dispatchers. An additional plus for the automated system was that multiple dispatch calls could be loaded and stacked for broadcast which increased the call-to-dispatch efficiency. I never kept a detailed log of stacked dispatch calls but recall several time five calls going out in immediate succession.

In adjacent news, the Baldwin County Revenue Commissioner is the planning stages of utilizing email to better communicate with property owners. Caution, however, is urged since this was only in the planning stage and has been so for many years. I've moved back from the edge of my seat.

 

[TomServo]

One other minor aspect of the automated dispatching that I appreciated as a time-shifted listener (listening to the recorded files SDRtrunk writes versus listening live) was that the dispatch tones were one transmission, then a separate transmission was done for the actual dispatch. That made it super easy to delete the tone files and just hear traffic and dispatched voice calls. Now with it being live dispatchers again they're keeping the radio keyed up between the tones and speech. I've gotten really good at skipping the tones in each file quickly but sometimes I get caught when the tones are extra long like they are for Belforest and Loxley.

It's not an issue listening live but when you've got 150+ calls queued in a media player, the tones do get annoying after a while. I've always wondered if the dispatchers hear those tones in their sleep!

Also, if you look carefully in the video you can see some of the channel names on the radios! Kind of cool, but also kind of messy with all the different radio brands and models stacked.