FCC, NENA Officials See Major Local Role in Enforcing 911 Indoor Location Accuracy Rules
Localized public safety answering points (PSAPs) have “an obvious leading part” in making the FCC’s 911 wireless location accuracy order and the industry-public safety road map work, FCC Public Safety Bureau Deputy Chief David Furth said on Tuesday. PSAPs “are in the best position” to monitor the on-the-ground accuracy of 911 location technologies the carriers are testing as part of the order and road map, he said during a National Emergency Number Association (NENA) conference. The 911 indoor location accuracy order the FCC adopted Jan. 29 was seen to have been influenced by the voluntary commitments included in the road map (see 1501290066).
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The FCC’s adoption of the order doesn’t mean the carriers’ road map commitments “go away,” said NENA Director-Government Affairs Trey Forgety. The carriers have commitments to produce reports for the FCC, APCO and NENA on the carriers’ progress on meeting the road map’s goals, he said. Data produced in the reports also will be viewable at a localized level, giving PSAPs a “critical role to play” in evaluating the efficacy of location technologies and alerting the FCC to potential problems, Forgety said. Furth said California has “made enormous strides” in collecting real-time location accuracy data at the PSAP level, which could make its experience an example for other states to follow.
States and local PSAPs are “in the best position” to respond to location accuracy issues because they're closer to the situation, Furth said, noting recent media reports of 911 location accuracy problems in suburban Atlanta that may have factored into the Dec. 29 death of Shanell Anderson in Cherokee County, Georgia. Anderson’s call to 911 after she drove her vehicle into a pond was routed to a PSAP in Fulton County, while the pond was located in Cherokee County, USA Today reported. A 911 dispatcher couldn’t determine Anderson’s location because the PSAP’s system included only a map of Fulton County, USA Today said. PSAPs “know the most about the conditions in their specific jurisdictions,” Furth said. The Cherokee County/Fulton County 911 location incident “is a story where a lot of the focus is going to be ‘what’s going on in my community?’” Furth said. “That’s what consumers are going to want to know.”
Location accuracy issues occur for a variety of reasons and aren't a “catastrophic failure within the 911 system itself,” National Association of State 911 Administrators Association Director Evelyn Bailey said during a separate NENA conference panel. The Cherokee County/Fulton County 911 location incident underscores the need for PSAPs to have geographic information system map data for neighboring jurisdictions, she said. The incident “wasn’t so much a failure of 911” as “a failure to make sure that if you’re getting calls from a cell tower that serves a neighboring jurisdiction, that you have that map data, too,” Bailey said.