Description of Alarm Interface Enhancements

Implemented Noon, Tuesday, April 28, 2009

The following features surrounding the operation of the electronic alarm interface are implemented effective noon on Tuesday, April 28, 2009. NOTE: The features mentioned below only will work for alarm events transmitted electronically via the interface. Currently, Vector Security is the sole participating alarm company but it expected that some of the larger alarm companies will participate soon and the software is ready for their participation.

  1. The alarm company operators now have a method to send DEC updates for an alarm event after the alarm event has already been transmitted and processed by the CAD System as a call-for-service. All updates received from the alarm company will appear as a new comment in the Remarks window once the call is selected. The UPDATE button on the I/Dispatcher screen will illuminate upon receipt of a new update from the alarm company. Please see the screen shot examples attached.
  2. DEC staff may also send an UPDATE message to the alarm company operator to ask a specific question about an alarm event already received. To accomplish this, the DEC CAD user should Select the call-for-service event and use the REMARKS line to enter a comment to be transmitted to the alarm company. The comment must be preceded with double-pound signs “##” so that the CAD System knows to send the comment to the alarm company. Do not type past the right margin on the Remarks entry line. Please see the screen shot examples attached.
  3. The CAD System will automatically send an Update message to the alarm company when each unit is dispatched and when each unit arrives on the scene. The CAD will also send a call closure notice to the alarm company when the event is closed after all units are cleared from the call. All dispositions for all police units who responded to the event will be reported back to the alarm company as an Update message automatically.
  4. A separate set of processes are implemented on the CAD System to handle “Address Validation Only” requests from the alarm company so that priority processing for actual alarm events is handled independently without being choked by address validation requests. The Address Validation requests will be handled at a lower priority. Address validations will cause a call-for-service with an event type of Z-ADDR-VALID to appear momentarily in the pending call queue and then disappear after the CAD has processed the request. No action is necessary on the part of DEC staff.
  5. Address validation requests are performed automatically, without human intervention, by the alarm company’s software whenever a new account is entered in the alarm company’s database or when any change is made to the account. When the CAD system validates an address as a valid City of Richmond address, the GIS coordinates representing the latitude and longitude are returned to the alarm company which become part of the account record. This entire process is transparent to DEC personnel.