911 Public Safety Camera Sharing is new product that Makes it Easy to Share Live Video from Surveillance Cameras with Emergency Communication Centers (ECCs) during a 911 Emergency.
When First Responders arrive in response to a 911 Emergency call the only information they usually have is whatever a caller may have said on the phone. If it was a 911 text they will probably know even less.
Time is critical in an Emergency. The faster Emergency personnel can locate people in distress and avoid any hazards along the way the better the chances those individuals will have to survive. Unfortunately, Emergency Personnel usually have no visual information when they arrive and must go in completely ‘blind’. Even if an ECC has the ability to receive photos or video clips, callers can’t provide them with live video of that location.
Operators communicating with on-site responders therefore have no way to help direct the people being sent in to try and prevent the loss of life. Imagine not knowing there is a shooter around the corner or needing to find people in a fire or collapsed somewhere. Time wasted making guesses can be fatal.
Meanwhile, security cameras are practically everywhere these days and [could be] the eyes that help save someone's life. BUT sharing them has never been easy or practical and usually involves dedicated network connections, with all of their costs and implications for privacy and security.
Eagle Eye Networks has now dramatically changed this.
With 911 Camera Sharing, there is no need to set up additional users, assign permissions or open firewalls and the cameras, recordings and the network cannot be accessed. All communication is outbound [only] and consists of live streams from the cameras that have been pre-designated as ‘shareable’ in the event they’re ever needed in an emergency.
The live video is ‘only’ available during a 911 Emergency [initiated call] and can only be viewed by the 911 operator or dispatcher speaking to the Responders. Once the emergency has ended the live streams can no longer be viewed (outside of the normal video system users).
Setup is as easy as connecting a small network appliance (e.g., a bridge) via an Ethernet cable and assigning GPS coordinates to the chosen cameras.
When a 911 call is made from an area that has made any of their cameras ‘sharable’ (based on GPS location of the cameras and a 911 caller), the ECC telecommunicator can view those cameras and use what they are seeing to help direct the Responders to where they need to go and tell them what to expect.
The cloud-based Eagle Eye Networks video surveillance platform that makes this possible is low cost, uses bank-level security measures to encrypt the video transmission and any video accessed by telecommunicators is tracked in the Eagle Eye VMS Audit Log.
If there’s an Emergency at your location will First Responders have to go in blind?
Or, will they know what to expect and have a better chance of finding people (in time) because they were able to temporarily use nearby cameras?
