ARLINGTON COUNTY, Va. — When flash flooding swept across the D.C. region in August 2023, Arlington County’s Emergency Communications Center was flooded with calls. But not all of them were emergencies. It was the last thing 911 dispatchers needed as they tried to focus on those in need of immediate help.
“It can be stressful,” said Arlington County Emergency Communications Center supervisor Ryan Scarzella when asked about balancing true 911 emergency calls with non-emergency calls.
In response to that storm, Arlington County decided to go high tech to take some of that stress off employees. Arlington County is one of the first 911 call centers in the country, and the first in the northeast, to use artificial intelligence to handle non-emergency calls using a system called Amazon Connect.
“I think that AI will have a lot of roles in the 911 center,” said ECC Administrator Jacob Saurer.
So, how does the AI assist work?
Even when people in Arlington dial a dedicated non-emergency line, the call comes to the emergency call center. Now, an automated voice answers those calls. Then the AI robot takes you through the same steps a human would.
Saurer says that right now, Arlington County’s AI system can take reports for storm damage, graffiti, towing and can even send the caller links to fill out police reports. That frees up dispatchers to focus on actual emergencies.
“A lot remains to be seen in terms of the long-term impact and utilization of artificial intelligence within the 911 call center,” said Brian Fontes, CEO of the National Emergency Number Association.
Fontes said ongoing staffing shortages at 911 call centers make AI a perfect force multiplier, especially for emergency communication systems plagued with long wait times.
“I think the future remains to be written,” Fontes said.
For now, that does not include using AI for actual emergencies.
“We do not recommend use of Amazon Connect for the routing and answering of 911 calls,” wrote Amazon Senior PR Manager Shawnee Cohn in an email. “However, there are use cases where 911 personnel can forward calls to Amazon Connect for resolution — after a human call taker has determined those calls do not require a public safety response. While we can’t predict the future, what I can tell you is that that I’m excited about opportunities for AI to empower public safety decision-makers with better data,” Cohn wrote.
Fontes added that he does not see a day when AI will fully replace 911 dispatchers.
“I think most people would take a look at artificial intelligence and say probably not,” Fontes said. “In the manufacturing world, artificial intelligence may be able to gauge wells on a product or something of this nature. But when you are dealing with humans with respect to emergencies, the human factor that human intelligence is actually more capable of being tailored to the immediate emergency.”
Saurer said on a typical day Arlington County 911 dispatchers take around 125 calls for true emergencies, and about 1000 that are not. Saurer said they will continue to build out the system to handle more non-emergency issues.
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