Las Condes and Lo Barnechea are two of the main municipalities in the Chilean capital Santiago. Along with Vitacura, another important residential municipality, they formed a municipal security association called AMSZO, focused on the search and improvement of the best technological tools for public safety. Because of its rapid growth and dynamism, local public safety authorities, through AMSZO, have been stepping up their effort to upgrade their technologies to tackle the challenges they have in managing emergencies and incidents. To achieve this objective, they have integrated Hytera Integrated Command & Control (ICC) solution and launched it as a unified dispatching and management platform that allows efficient communication and collaboration during the handling of events reported to the emergency service 1402/1405 of the Directorate of Public Safety.
Public Safety Challenges
Las Condes is the ninth most populated municipality in Chile. With a significant population density, the public safety authority receives, on daily basis, a huge number of incidents and emergency reports that require an immediate response. A minor failure in coordination of the teams on the field could cause economic and human losses; therefore, the need to centralize planning and decision-making to protect citizens was very obvious.
Similarly, Lo Barnechea constitutes an economic center of great importance in Chile and Latin America. The municipality cannot afford any incident that affects public safety that would potentially disrupt the operation of businesses and the life of residents. Hytera's ICC solution plays an essential role in unifying mission critical communication systems to ensure the continuity of productive activities and the safety of the population.
Go Unification and Convergence
In both municipalities, the priority of the Public Security Directorate is the safety of the citizens. The investment made in diverse technologies required a strategic coordination that allowed to attend, manage, and dispatch emergencies quickly and effectively. In both cases, the upgrade and implementation of the Command & Control Center facilitates the efficient management of emergency calls and other municipal incidents from citizens to 1402/1405. This tool allows the integration of existing communication systems to achieve uninterrupted and reliable communication.
To ensure response capacity, the ICC Centers have server redundancy, a duplicate switching matrix, dispatcher stations, a geographic information system (GIS) and incident management. The Hytera ICC solution, critical in emergency management, interconnects to various existing communication systems in such a way that the installed capacity is fully utilized. The fluidity and versatility of this solution has allowed an effective integration with third-party applications that are adapted to the specific requirements of emergency management. Each emergency is received and allocated automatically to the units closest to the incident, so that response times are reduced.
In Las Condes, the Command & Control Center has 20 consoles with geographic redundancy in Lo Barnechea. Every time the Municipality receives emergency calls and other municipal incidents to 1402, the platform allows a coordinated management of operations through the integration of communications with SOSAFE, panic buttons and other third-party applications. In Lo Barnechea, the Command & Control Center has a total of 7 dispatching consoles with 4 of them in the Civic Center. In this way, communications, GIS and incident management are coordinated in a timely manner.
The ability to integrate various technologies makes a difference in decision making. Both localities have achieved an effective management of their incidents and they are considered the two safest municipalities in Santiago de Chile and in Latin America.
