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Onondaga, N.Y. - The Onondaga County 911 Center - which handles about 500,000 calls a year - will be launching two new tools to help dispatchers and callers.
One connects non-emergency callers to an artificial intelligence system that takes their call and relays emergency callers to dispatchers.
The new tools are part of a $350,000 package that the county’s Department of Emergency Communications purchased this year from Axon, a public safety technology company based in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The package also includes an AI tool that creates transcripts of interactions between callers and dispatchers.
County Executive Ryan McMahon and Emergency Communications Commissioner Julie Corn unveiled the new technology at a news conference inside the 911 Center on Wednesday afternoon.
The first new tool is an AI dispatcher named Erica that will take the center’s non-emergency line phone calls in an effort to allow dispatchers to maintain focus on emergency phone calls.
Around one-third of the center’s calls each year are deemed non-emergency calls, according to McMahon.
In a live demonstration, the AI tool handled a call from someone who said a car had been sitting in a parking lot without moving for several days. The tool texted the caller a link for a towing company. That’s something dispatchers can’t do, according to McMahon.
If a person calls the line and the situation is deemed to be an emergency, the AI automatically transfers them to a live dispatcher, according to Corn. The AI will also be consistently monitored by humans, she said.
As of right now, the county is not considering adding the feature to emergency dispatches, McMahon said.
The second new tool allows emergency dispatchers to send callers a link that, when clicked, allows callers to make a video that is livestreamed onto the dispatcher’s computer screen.
The new feature lets callers show dispatchers video of events as they unfold, which McMahon said will “improve situational awareness” when first responders arrive on scene. Callers can also use it when they are lost and need help knowing their whereabouts, he said.
“These are important initiatives that meet our priorities to adopt the use of AI to modernize our technology and to conserve resources that are critical to our operation in county government,” McMahon said.
The Onondaga County 911 Center dispatches first responders from 94 police, fire and emergency medical service agencies, according to the center’s 2024 annual report.
In 2024, the center received 523,660 emergency calls and 86,697 non-emergency calls.
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