In regional emergency response, even small delays can significantly impact the speed at which help arrives. And when seconds matter most, waiting in line — or in the wrong city’s queue — can make a difference.
That’s why Virginia Beach, Va., and four neighboring jurisdictions are rolling out a computer-aided dispatch (CAD) integration project this fall, aiming to close those communication gaps and bridge the divide between dispatch systems. The initiative will connect the CAD systems of Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake, Portsmouth and Suffolk — allowing dispatchers in one city to send emergency call data directly to a neighboring city’s system.
At the center of it all is a data exchange hub powered by CentralSquare Unify, which serves as middleware to link the participating cities’ CAD platforms. The tool includes an interface that administrators or technical staff can use to configure business rules — like standardizing how each system labels fire trucks, emergency types or unit statuses — but it’s built to essentially operate in the background…