On Monday, April 16, the long awaited CSAA message broker server—a critical component of the Automated Secure Alarm Protocol (ASAP)—became operational in the production environment.
The City of Richmond (Va.) Police Department’s Division of Emergency Communications and Vector Security, two of the three original ASAP pilot participants, migrated to the CSAA message broker officially at 1 p.m. EST on April 16. The migration was seamless and transparent for the end users at both Vector Security’s and Richmond’s 911 PSAP, according to Bill Hobgood, project coordinator for APCO and project manager for the city of Richmond’s Department of Information Technology Public Safety Team.
Anita Ostrowski, Vector Security’s vice president for central stations, says that operators at Vector Security received very brief, informal training that was required when Vector migrated to the production message broker. No formal training or in-depth training program was required for Vector’s migration.
The message broker is a combination of hardware and software intended to perform a middleware function between Nlets and the alarm monitoring companies that want to take advantage of ASAP. It performs error checking and ensures that the transmissions from the alarm monitoring companies are properly formatted before sending the message to Nlets for subsequent forwarding to the appropriate state control point and ASAP-participating PSAP.
Notes CSAA Immediate Past President Ed Bonifas, vice president of Alarm Detection Systems and co-chair of CSAA’s ASAP Steering Committee, “This sets the stage for the future participation of additional alarm monitoring companies. Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.”