Technological Innovation for 9-1-1 Dispatch

Public safety answering points (PSAPs), which more commonly are known as 9-1-1 dispatch centers, often are the first contact for someone who is in need. Occasionally, the hard-working PSAP call-takers are overlooked, but their professionalism, efficiency and dedication can set the tone for the entire emergency. Therefore, they are a crucial component to the fire and emergency service response model.

Over the past five years, many fire departments have seen a dramatic increase in responses. However, they often fail to understand that their individual increase is only a small percentage of the total burden on the entire PSAP region. Although fire chiefs must reconsider their service-delivery model (i.e., mutual aid, quick-response vehicles, additional medical units and other joint ventures), PSAPs also must make major changes to address the substantial increase.

The Charleston County Consolidated Emergency Communications Center (CCCECC) in South Carolina, which is led by Jim Lake, is deploying progressive technologies and taking lessons learned from other public safety providers to transform how it provides service to the community. As a result, the CCCECC has renovated emergency communications both with residents and emergency service providers and is a progressive example for others to follow.
Lake truly understands that it takes a huge team to accomplish what the organization has done.

“Everything we do is for the betterment of the community we serve and the safety of the responders who assist them,” Lake says. This echoes the perspective of every great public safety leader I have known.

With community support and visionary leadership, Lake’s team has deployed innovative solutions to profoundly change how the CCCECC does business.

Traditional 9-1-1 alternatives

In my earliest years in elementary school, I was taught to call 9-1-1 for any serious emergencies. The truth is, there are options to calling 9-1-1 in many regions.

As landlines become a thing of the past in most communities, mobile devices are filling the communications gap. Although I have moved several times, I still have the same cellphone number, which isn’t abnormal for people. Enhanced 911 was the answer to this issue. It allows faster triangulation of cellular signals to find a caller whose number isn’t tied to a particular address. The next step in this evolution is text-to-911, which is useful for:

An injured person who can’t speak.
Emergencies where a person must remain quiet.
A person who is deaf, hard of hearing or speech impaired.
Someone who is in a very noisy environment.
Someone who is in an area that has poor cellular reception.
A disaster when cellular networks are overwhelmed.

The latest step of the smartphone takeover is 911Helpme.com. It allows a PSAP to receive a report of an emergency via any internet-connected device. It also has the benefit of allowing a user to submit a photograph of the emergency.

CCCECC uses text-to-911 and 911Helpme.com. Collectively, the two initiated more than 6,000 9-1-1 responses in 2023.

Enhanced call-handling capabilities

Although text-to-911 and 911Helpme.com provide alternatives for an individual to connect to a 9-1-1 dispatcher, an AI-powered solution improves the call-handling capabilities of PSAPs.

In March 2025, CCCECC implemented APEX call handling by Carbyne to increase efficiency and situational awareness, including:

Voice-to-text. PSAP call-takers receive a real-time text transcription of a caller’s spoken words, which facilitates an improvement in accuracy and efficiency.
Translation. This feature allows for seamless communication with non-English-speaking callers by automatically translating conversations in real time.
Triage. The system prioritizes emergency calls, to ensure that simultaneous incidents, such as multiple calls about the same motor vehicle accident, don’t delay responses to other emergencies.
Location services. If a caller’s location isn’t transmitted automatically, call-takers can send a link to obtain precise handset coordinates. If the caller accepts the link, the call taker will have temporary access to the caller’s exact location.
Images and video. Callers can share images and live video with the emergency communications center, which provides critical visual information to support response efforts.
Responder link. Call-takers can transmit received images and videos directly to first responders who are in the field, to enhance situational awareness.

The results of the CCCECC’s deployment still are being quantified, but the initial results are promising. Automatically triaging nonemergent calls, particularly during peak hours of operations, is worth the reduction of dispatcher stress.

Seeing a video of an emergency scene while en route to it is a game-changing initiative for responders who are trained to make immediate decisions that are based on a scene size-up. (Imagine seeing that an emergency requires an immediate rescue over a traditional quick attack.) Crews arriving prepared to meet the need no doubt leads to improved outcomes.

Regionalization and beyond

Another great innovation at the CCCECC is the Coastal Cooperative, which launched in 2018. It operates like an automatic/mutual-aid agreement but on a grander scale. Currently expanding to include more geographically diverse partners, the initiative shares the burden between PSAP locations and adds a level of redundancy that once was just a dream.

The cooperative includes organizations that serve 27.7 percent of South Carolina’s population. Its success stories include:

Charleston County took Berkeley County, SC’s, 9-1-1 calls during Hurricane Ian in 2022 after a generator failure.
Berkeley County took Charleston County’s 9-1-1 calls in 2023 when Charleston County evacuated for a brush fire that threatened its primary 9-1-1 center.
Charleston County took Beaufort County, SC’s, 9-1-1 calls when it suffered a complete power loss at its facility in 2024.

With this initial success, Lake is expanding the cooperative, including assessing the capability to transfer 9-1-1 calls to and from Collier County, FL.

Large-scale disasters, such as Hurricane Irene, highlighted the reason PSAPs should consider innovations like the Coastal Cooperative. When asked why CCCECC chose its partner in Florida, Lake said that Collier County is in a different historical hurricane pathway than Charleston County, and the partnership hopefully will ensure that both centers aren’t affected by the same natural disaster.

Getting started

Lake’s advice for someone who has a similar desire to become more progressive: Reach out to others, and don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Like their fire service counterparts, most PSAPs are willing to help others along in their journey.

Specifically referencing the deployment of innovative technology, Lake’s advice is to make small and calculated changes. Don’t change multiple variables and expect to get impressive results.