Call for Participation – New TMA/ANSI Standard

The Monitoring Association (TMA), as an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) accredited Standards Development Organization (SDO), is seeking interested individuals to participate on the committee that will create a proposed new standard, currently designated as TMA-AVS-01.

From the ANSI Project Initiation Notification System:

Abstract of Project:

The increasing use of data by Public Safety has had a positive impact on the services they provide to the public.  Datasets generated by commercial sources, such as the alarm industry, can be a valuable data source to Public Safety.  Real time data from security providers will improve situational awareness as well as first responder safety.  Sensor innovation driven by technological advances has raised the quantity and quality of data collected by alarm systems. 

Alarm monitoring centers can use this data to estimate the validity of an alarm event, which enables the creation of standardized “alarm scoring” metrics.  Calls for Service to Emergency Call Centers/Public Safety Answering Points that include a standardized scoring metric can assist public safety departments that opt-in to the program, with their alarm response policies, similar to how Location Accuracy and Crash Severity scoring are used. 

Project Need:

Public Safety officials in municipalities establish alarm response policies specific to their jurisdiction.  Such an ANSI standard will be created cooperatively with Public Safety stakeholders.  Alarm scores would be calculated by an alarm monitoring center process and technology.  Alarm scores transmitted to Public Safety in a standardized manner minimizes workflows within Public Safety.  It allows Public Safety to take advantage of the data without the burden of receiving and analyzing it themselves.  Additionally, the standard can enable processes for data relative to a Call for Service, to be “pulled” by Public Safety on demand.

Identify Stakeholders:

The Monitoring Association (TMA), Security Industry Association (SIA), Association of Public Communications Officials (APCO), National Emergency Number Association (NENA), International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), National Sheriffs Association (NSA), International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC), National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), Partnership for Priority Verified Alarm Response (PPVAR) 

ANSI guidelines require that standards development committees have proper “balance” so that no single interest category dominates the group or process to the exclusion of fair and equitable consideration of other viewpoints.  Proper balance of committee membership will be achieved through sufficient representation from three primary interest categories: User – a person or organization who directly or indirectly utilize services or products described in the standard; Producer – a person or organization that directly or indirectly produce, manufacture, or distribute products or develop services which may be described in the standard; and General Interest – a person who has expressed a general interest in the content of the standard.  Specifically, proposed interest categories are Alarm Monitoring, Public Safety, Installer/Maintainer, Special Expert, Service Provider, and Manufacturer/Software Provider.

Membership in TMA is not required to participate as a committee member.  Additionally, anyone may offer comments on the draft standard without being a committee member or a TMA member.  ANSI and TMA procedures require equal consideration of all comments.

TMA leadership will determine the number of committee members with consideration to the number of applications received, balanced with the need to assure the group can work effectively and efficiently.   Alternate member non-voting participation will be considered.

The committee will be asked to complete their initial draft of the standard within 120 days of the first committee meeting.  Following completion of the draft document, committee participation for an additional three to a six-month period will be required during the public review and comment phase, and for completion of the final draft.

Please complete the online short form if you are interested in being considered for membership on the TMA-AVS-01 committee.  Questions may be directed to Bryan Ginn at bginn@tma.us or at 703-660-4919.