The product launches, which happened as the New York company held its annual Innovation Day, are designed to give police, firefighters and medical workers access to more information during emergency responses, data from a variety of sources combined into easy-to-understand streams that can lead to quicker action from those first responders.
That’s the theory, at least — a theory driving so much change and investment in this particular part of the government technology world, even as AI presents new problems for law enforcement.
The new RapidSOS Unite platform, which can integrate with “most call-handling and computer-aided dispatch applications,” is designed to provide a wide view of emergencies via AI, multimedia streaming and other methods, according to a statement.
During an emergency, the platform “fuses millions of sensor feeds into one unified picture of an incident, allowing public safety officials to view real-time location, health profile, telematics, alarm data and more,” according to the statement.
RapidSOS also has launched what it calls an AI “copilot,” Harmony, which uses a large language model specifically trained for public safety, as described in another statement from the company.
During a train derailment, for instance, Harmony would provide to responders information about which rail cars carry hazardous materials, and then offer to those emergency workers relevant procedures to handle the crisis.
Harmony also could find “relevant camera feeds of the incident” and combine that into a unified picture.
As with so much product development these days in public safety tech, these new RapidSOS tools can help agencies overcome staffing shortages, CEO Michael Martin told Government Technology.
“We are asking 911 [call handlers] to do more with less and less,” he said.
