For Zetron VoIP

In the summer of 2006, the City of Grande Prairie, in Alberta, Canada, completed a project to update and expand its emergency communication system.

In the summer of 2006, the City of Grande Prairie, in Alberta, Canada, completed a project to update and expand its emergency communication system.

The City and its IT department worked closely with long-standing partners Glentel Inc. and Zetron to install new, state-of-the-art equipment in Grande Prairie’s existing Emergency Communications Centre (ECC). This included a total renovation and upgrade of the Centre, and an expansion at this location from two dispatch positions to three.

The project also involved adding a new, multi-media, remote facility—the Emergency Operations Center (EOC)—at the Grande Prairie City Hall, and equipping it with a fourth dispatch position that duplicates the positions at the ECC.

The challenges for Grande Prairie The city of Grande Prairie is situated about halfway up the province of Alberta, 460 kilometers (286 miles) northwest of Edmonton, the provincial capital. Grande Prairie is the largest center in Alberta north of Edmonton. A rich agricultural history and a thriving oil and natural gas industry have helped increase the population of Grande Prairie to over 45,000 and Grande Prairie’s market area to 250,000.

The Grande Prairie ECC  The Grande Prairie Emergency Communications Center (ECC) is the main Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) for the region. This means that the ECC performs E9-1-1 and dispatching services not just for the residents of Grande Prairie proper, but also for over 30 communities throughout northwestern Alberta that have contracted Grande Prairie to do so.

As the area’s main PSAP, Grande Prairie must plan for the future so that it will be able to meet the changing needs of the communities it serves. This includes upgrading its communications system from time to time.

An ongoing relationship with Glentel Glentel has helped Grande Prairie implement and maintain its emergency communications systems for over a decade.

“We originally got involved with the City of Grande Prairie in 1995 when we deployed their first Zetron touch-screen consoles,” says Dan Heggerud, Senior Account Manager at Glentel. “In the last two to three years, we’ve helped Grande Prairie upgrade their existing ECC from its previous Zetron Series 4000 Model 4024 equipment to the Model 4048.”

As a result of their long-term relationship with Grande Prairie, Glentel was the logical choice last year when Grande Prairie decided it was time to improve its emergency communications system.

They worked together to devise and deploy a solution that includes the following:

An update of the ECC equipment, which involved adding a third operator position and upgrading all positions.
• Improved functionality and a screen layout that incorporate suggestions provided by Grande Prairie’s operators, many of whom have ten or more years of dispatching experience.
• The creation of a remote, highly secure, multi-media Emergency Operations Center (EOC) at City Hall.
• The addition of a fourth workstation at the EOC that employs a Voice-over-IP (VoIP) connection to the ECC.
• A setup designed to ensure that an evacuation from the ECC to the EOC can be completed easily and quickly, and will not require operators to learn new equipment.

“The project we completed this summer included upgrading existing Zetron consoles to Zetron’s Integrator RD workstations, adding the third Integrator RD position at the ECC, and adding the fourth at the new location in City Hall,” says Heggerud.

“The ECC is Grande Prairie’s main dispatch center,” he continues. “It’s the center for their normal, 24-hour dispatching and E9-1-1 operations. With the new EOC, the City of Grande Prairie can move all of its key agencies—the fire department, law enforcement, and public works—to the EOC in the event of a large-scale emergency, like a pandemic. This is part of their long-term planning. The EOC could provide a complete emergency operation center if a crisis were to occur to the city.”

Heggerud goes on to explain that Grande Prairie designed the EOC to serve either as a standalone center or in conjunction with the ECC: “We developed the fourth position as a mirror image of the ECC so the EOC would have immediate and full functionality that was identical to the ECC. All of the functions operators would normally perform at the ECC are duplicated—from the telephones to the office layout. The EOC is a carbon copy of the ECC.”

The results for Grande Prairie  The new equipment is up and running and working well for Grande Prairie, and it has already passed its first real-world test.
“The new VoIP connectivity was thoroughly tested in June of 2006 when we physically relocated our ECC to the EOC at City Hall for three weeks while we renovated the ECC,” says Janine Blackburn, Deputy Chief and Manager of the ECC. “The relocation of the ECC to City Hall was a complex project, but was seamless for our customers.”

“Because the City’s LAN includes most City-owned buildings, our new VoIP connectivity will allow us to move our Zetron console to an alternate location within the municipality if we ever need to,” Blackburn adds. “Even if we move it, the console will still provide us with the same seamless connectivity.”

Clearly, Grande Prairie is taking the right steps to ensure the effectiveness of its emergency communications.

When asked his opinion of their recent improvements, Dan Heggerud confirms this, saying that Grande Prairie’s planning, readiness, and new system make it “… the benchmark for fire and EMS dispatch and 9-1-1 centers in Alberta.”  Article provided by Zetron