NYPD ; What is Annie Alliy?

[tampatracker]

While monitoring NYPD & Transit Police in New York City I have heard reference to Annie Alley (?) as some kind of call locator for incoming emergency calls.I've searched the forums and can find no reference to this. Does anybody know what Annie Alley is?

 

[rfburns]

Search on:
ANI
ALI

 

[GTR8000]

FDNY Radio Terminology

 

[mmckenna]

ANI= Automatic Number Identification
ALI= Automatic Location Identification

This is the stuff the 911 operators see, calling phone number and the location of the phone.

 

[Thayne]

Any Alley = A place to eat donuts (surreptitiously)

 

[racescan_fan]

It's kind of like Annie Hall.

 

[Spec]

Refers to address identification from received phone calls. Gives callers address, name, location etc.provided by the telco.

 

[902]

For many years, NYC had basic 9-1-1 with sheer volumes of calls. Not long ago, and for a number of reasons, they began a very ambitious project to take Enhanced 9-1-1 that has become the de facto level of service elsewhere throughout the United States.

E9-1-1 lets the calltaker know the calling party's number (NOT Caller ID), and the calling party's location. ANI is short for automatic number identification, and ALI is short for automatic location identification. Those items used to be exclusively for wired telephones only. Cellular took it one step further by giving it phases. A phase 0 cellular system routed to a public safety answering point based on assignment only. Someone assigns calls from this site go to Jersey City, calls from this site go to NYPD. Phase 0.5 give you the site location and sector. Your caller can be anywhere inside the pattern of coverage. Phase 1 gave you a callback number to go with that so that when someone butt-dials 9-1-1, the calltaker can call them back and ask them if they are okay. Phase 2 gave all of the above, plus latitude and longitude that could be plotted by the 9-1-1 telephone system or the CAD system into a GIS. The ANI/ALI location is not always referenced to a street address, especially if the caller is on a boat (like this one, before Phase II, and more here in the last few paragraphs). It's my understanding that the sinking boat incident was the big push for ANI/ALI in the City.

Those items are now being worked on for VoIP telephone calls, as the number of traditional wireline telephones is decreasing.

Why is ANI/ALI really important especially to VoIP? Because you can unplug your VoIP phone in NYC, take it to Shanghai, plug it back in, call 9-1-1, and your call will go to NYPD. So, the caller might not be where "Annie Ally" says it's supposed to be.

 

[maalox]

i was wondering what that meant lol

 

[mmckenna]

Why is ANI/ALI really important especially to VoIP? Because you can unplug your VoIP phone in NYC, take it to Shanghai, plug it back in, call 9-1-1, and your call will go to NYPD. So, the caller might not be where "Annie Ally" says it's supposed to be.

NG911 (Next Generation 911) will address this. It's being trialled now. It will also begin to address other things, like SMS to 911, e-mail to 911, video, etc. It will also make it easier for 911 PSAP's to back up other PSAP's.

I never knew that NYC was so far behind the times with E911, that was surprising.

 

[902]

NG911 (Next Generation 911) will address this. It's being trialled now. It will also begin to address other things, like SMS to 911, e-mail to 911, video, etc. It will also make it easier for 911 PSAP's to back up other PSAP's.

I never knew that NYC was so far behind the times with E911, that was surprising.

One of the things that made it so was the call volume. Most systems were built for areas that were fractional to NYC, and building one that could accommodate the scale of NYC's was more of a proof-of-concept, as it hadn't been done before. NYC also has layers of infrastructure - some of which is extremely old and is only being replaced now, after it has been water damaged in Sandy flooding.

Being a former practitioner in this industry, I'm not convinced that NG911 is a good thing. That's seditious to say, but: 1) we failed to educate the public that calling for help means calling 9-1-1, not texting to it. Public education was (supposed to be) a component of the 9-1-1 concept. And, 2) the information that will be collected and will need to be processed by telecommunicators is overwhelming. Any of the proxemics that have not been decimated by highly-compressed digital voice are now completely gone when someone attaches a crappy phone-cam pic to a text message of a building that looks like ??? with the only description of the call being the caption "This..." under it, and an EXIF point coordinate from the picture and the caller's device. The analysis time to slosh through all this stuff is going to require additional headcount, which many communities are unwilling to or cannot fund. And, maybe a 3) where do we stop accommodation? If X-Boxes became the de facto mode of communication for a future generation, will 9-1-1 have to install X-Box interfaces (that's a completely random example based on what my kids left laying around)? Who funds that? See what I mean? The tail wags the taxpayer dog once industry gets involved.

 

[tampatracker]

Thanks all for the responses, I'm now an expert on the subject. Good to know who Annie Halls sidekick is too.

 

[DaveNF2G]

Someone has also failed to educate the public as to what an "emergency" is.

 

[902]

Someone has also failed to educate the public as to what an "emergency" is.

LOL! You bet! My back agrees, from having to carry stairchairs down all those 5 story walk-ups 30 years ago.

 

[mmckenna]

Being a former practitioner in this industry, I'm not convinced that NG911 is a good thing. That's seditious to say, but: 1) we failed to educate the public that calling for help means calling 9-1-1, not texting to it. Public education was (supposed to be) a component of the 9-1-1 concept. And, 2) the information that will be collected and will need to be processed by telecommunicators is overwhelming. Any of the proxemics that have not been decimated by highly-compressed digital voice are now completely gone when someone attaches a crappy phone-cam pic to a text message of a building that looks like ??? with the only description of the call being the caption "This..." under it, and an EXIF point coordinate from the picture and the caller's device. The analysis time to slosh through all this stuff is going to require additional headcount, which many communities are unwilling to or cannot fund. And, maybe a 3) where do we stop accommodation? If X-Boxes became the de facto mode of communication for a future generation, will 9-1-1 have to install X-Box interfaces (that's a completely random example based on what my kids left laying around)? Who funds that? See what I mean? The tail wags the taxpayer dog once industry gets involved.

I agree 100%. SMS to 911 is going to be an issue, and I haven't talked to any 911 folks that are looking forward to it. On the flip side, most systems are set up to allow TDD calls, but most deaf or hard of hearing people don't use TDD machines any more. My sister is a teacher for deaf/HOH students, and they all use text messaging. That's an accommodation I can understand. The issue is the (younger) public is wanting SMS as that is their common mode of communications, yet they don't understand how SMS really works, and the risks of it. All they know is that if they can text their friends, they should be able to text anyone they want.
But, seeing some of the new NG911 systems in design shows that -some- of these concerns will be addressed. The truth is something needs to be done about VoIP 911. The network monkeys can't comprehend the requirements, so they generally want to ignore them. I'm building out a 10,000 line PBX right now that will allow transition from TDM to SIP over the next few years. The hardest part of that is working with my network counterparts and getting them to understand that E911 has to work, 100% of the time, no exception. This, and 5 nines up time are completely foreign concepts to most network people.

 

[SteveC0625]

Nobody has mentioned the NG911 SMS photo issue yet. All of my former co-workers are taking bets on how many dirty pictures per day they'll be receiving. Given the vast number of cloned and other illegal phones out there, that may be an unsurmountable problem

 

[902]

The hardest part of that is working with my network counterparts and getting them to understand that E911 has to work, 100% of the time, no exception. This, and 5 nines up time are completely foreign concepts to most network people.

This is exactly why I think we're flirting with disaster when we go from a legacy LMR environment to a "nationwide broadband network" like what FirstNet and other proponents have posited. I've been attacked by co-workers for describing IT networks like blowing cans of Silly String into trees. The only resiliency is that there's a lot of string in the trees when they break. It still sucks to be someone in need of the network when the Silly String breaks along the last mile. In Katrina, WTC, and several other incidents, that's exactly where the points of failure occurred. And, the answer to resilience will probably be deployable resource - the COW truck... except there's one or two of those in this half of the country and there are 235 sites down in various cities that each have a restoration priority. Or, something goes down between one of the two master controllers and everything north of the line is braindead or functioning in some kind of CO isolation/failsoft mode.

IT architecture made it possible for people to create little Lucy and Ethel Telephone Companies out of their garages, and be exempt from the cumbersome politicoregulatory controls of the various Public Service or Public Utility Commissions. All by using COTS equipment! I came up through the Cold War and worked in buildings that were engineered to resist an atom bomb blast wave, so my interpretation of hardening is a little different. Have you seen the flowchart for NexGen? I'm wondering who else we can take care of by shoehorning them into the process. The whole system is no better than its weakest component... if you're not using the weakest component, yourself.

When I worked in the public sector, I had the biggest push-back on establishing PBX ALI. I ran 9-1-1 (on an Avaya platform), and the facilities maintenance guy ran the PBX through a Nortel. Whenever someone called 9-1-1 from a any facility, the situs address of the PBX came up! This is an issue for most offices, but for an enterprise that was a little smaller than the sprawling British Empire, someone may have called 9-1-1 from a phone that was 50 miles away... and the telecommunicators would have never known it. So, the fix to this was not in setting it up, it was in affixing little laminated cards with an "I am at..." to each phone (!!!). Can't make this stuff up. I feel your pain!

As for texting photos, that will probably trigger an industry taskforce, which will create a multi-billion dollar niche market for identifying and tracking the... ahem... models of those pictures. Not to worry, they're probably doing that somewhere already.

 

[chrismol1]

Whats next? I can text a photo of my house on fire? is that enough explanation while I hope my large SMS photo will be sent to the SMS Pics queue waiting to be deciphered on someones screen

 

[902]

Whats next? I can text a photo of my house on fire? is that enough explanation while I hope my large SMS photo will be sent to the SMS Pics queue waiting to be deciphered on someones screen

Yeah, pretty much. I shouldn't speak in generalizations, but younger folks feel they can take a picture of something, like a car crash, type the word "This" and send it, then expect the most appropriate help to arrive. After all, they sent a picture of it. The system should figure out where they are, or it can decode the EXIF data embedded in the JPEG.

Ever notice that with each layer of technology we get, the more compressed the information becomes? And the less expressive it becomes? And the more open to interpretation (and potential misunderstanding) it becomes?

 

[SteveC0625]

Ever notice that with each layer of technology we get, the more compressed the information becomes? And the less expressive it becomes? And the more open to interpretation (and potential misunderstanding) it becomes?

Applies to people too. My remaining contemporaries in the industry complain to me all the time about trying to train the younger new-hires. They talk way too fast and use a predominance of slang and poor grammar. And they don't understand how important it is to achieve a balance between too few and too many words when typing up a CAD job or speaking on the radio or telephone. Don't get me started on use of proper terminology, either.