First Responders

The retailer and cloud computing giant has announced the first cohort of the AWS GovTech Accelerator Program. Thirteen startups focused on public safety and courts will soon get a chance to impress the public sector.

Cyber attacks and natural disasters are serious threats to courts, and tabletop exercises can help prepare. For courts looking to try out tabletops, starting small can help.

The move, involving eight public safety agencies, is designed to improve responses to hurricanes and other emergencies. The CAD-to-CAD deployment reflects a hot trend in gov tech, according to an executive.

Within days of a widespread outage, officials began bringing homes and businesses back online through a patchwork of generator-powered microgrids that could run separately from fire-threatened transmission lines.

RapidSOS and Emergency24 are the latest firms to offer real-time data to help first responders with emergencies in nonresidential buildings. Losses from fires in such structures have increased significantly since 2011.

Two of the most active companies in the public safety tech space have teamed up to give emergency dispatchers and first responders more details about calls. The effort reflects a larger trend in the gov tech space.

The seller of public safety technology has a new app designed to give police, firefighters and medical workers more access to real-time data in the field. Kansas is the first big customer of this new product.

The FirstNet school safety system, to launch at the start of the 2023-2024 academic year, will allow school personnel to silently contact emergency responders by mobile app or wearable panic buttons.

Yuba County personnel use the model to divide communities into “chunks of real estate” based on geography, the number of people, routes in and out of the county and the different types of hazards in those areas.

“It helps eliminate inefficiencies so we have our law enforcement to respond to our campus but we need, also on larger scale incidents, to be able to communicate with Baltimore city police.”

PSAPs in Utah are cutting misrouted calls — and reducing emergency response times — via NENA-compliant technology from Motorola. A Utah tech official discusses the benefits.

The company will work with a variety of companies that provide data about fire emergencies. The idea is to give first responders access to more data and maps for structure fires via the Honeywell platform.

A project at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has developed a drone equipped with GPS, an infrared camera and 400 tiny “fireballs” that can be used to ignite prescribed burns from a safe distance.

The cloud-computing supplier has added new features and integrations to its Rapid Damage Assessment tool. The goal is to streamline permitting and inspection and help officials deal with different types of disasters.

A new deal between the two public safety tech companies could mean easier ways to track training, monitor complaints, evaluate officers and other tasks. CivicEye is coming off a $12.4 million funding round.

Alaska's cutting-edge drone program will empower emergency responders to reach remote terrain, saving lives through the integration of aerial and geographic information systems.

As CentralSquare announces its 30th such deal — this one for five public safety agencies in Virginia — a company executive talks about why demand will increase for such tools, and how customer interest is changing.

The company, famous for its gunshot detection system, says the new name reflects a wider view of law enforcement and public safety. SoundThinking also debuted a new platform that combines four products.