CentralSquare, the leading provider of public safety and public
administration software in North America, announced today that it has
acquired Tellus Safety Solutions, LLC, the leader in connecting multiple
computer aided dispatch (CAD) systems used by emergency responders.
CentralSquare already works with over 5,000 public safety agencies. To
accelerate the building of a single, virtual, nationwide 911 dispatch
system, current CentralSquare clients will immediately get complimentary
access to real-time situational awareness across jurisdictions – cutting
emergency response time by up to 2 minutes per incident and potentially
enabling first responders to save nearly 125,000 lives nationwide.
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An estimated 240 million calls are made to 911 across America each year.
At the end of each call is a citizen seeking immediate, life-saving
help. However, the calls come in to over 8,900 different primary and
secondary dispatch centers. These dispatch centers use multiple types of
software systems, preventing dispatchers from easily identifying,
deploying and coordinating emergency resources across jurisdictions.
This results in longer responses to life-threatening emergencies. For
example, a police vehicle from another jurisdiction may be closest to an
active shooter and could have reached a scene before the tragedy
escalated. It also leads to coordination challenges during natural
disasters where dozens of police, fire and EMS services need to work
collectively to prevent damage to life and property. For example, five
agencies and 51 fire stations needed seamless coordination to respond to
the recent wildfires in Southern California.
With this acquisition, CentralSquare is promoting “public safety without
borders” by building a single, virtual dispatch system across North
America – where multiple agencies on disparate 911 software solutions
can operate and communicate with each other as if they are on a single
system – thereby reducing response time and saving lives. The FCC
estimates that speeding up emergency response by one minute would save
253,032 lives nationally. Based on the number of public safety agencies
CentralSquare serves, and the expected reduction in response time, over
125,000 lives can potentially be saved by first responders nationwide.
“For over 10 years, Tellus has been providing ‘safety without borders,’
erasing the lines between cities, towns and counties so that critical
emergency response information can flow effortlessly and automatically
to the closest first responder, expediting emergency response and saving
lives. Hundreds of agencies have used the Tellus solution to cut down
emergency response time. For example, Columbus, Ohio, cut mutual aid
resource request time by 60% to just 25-30 seconds because the Tellus
solution eliminated call queuing and needing to spell out details over
the phone. Similarly, Orange County has reduced time per request from an
average of two and a half minutes to just 15 seconds – saving critical
seconds on every drowning, cardiac arrest and life-threatening
emergency. It’s exciting to join CentralSquare in bringing this powerful
technology to the largest community of public safety agencies in North
America,” said Tellus President Jonathan Mitchell.
“CentralSquare already provides the broadest, smartest and most unified
technology platform for nearly 5,000 public safety agencies across North
America. Going forward, seamless two-way integration between computer
aided dispatch systems will come standard out-of-the-box on the
CentralSquare Public Safety platform. As soon as a community deploys the
CentralSquare Public Safety platform, it will be able to seamlessly
integrate law enforcement, fire and EMS resources with all neighboring
communities. Our solution preserves the autonomy of each dispatch center
as it integrates into existing CAD workstations. This eliminates the
need for retraining dispatchers and builds on the unique local
requirements at each center,” said Steve Seoane, EVP and General Manager
of Public Safety at CentralSquare.
“Seamless CAD-to-CAD connectivity is just one step in our vision to
ensure that all agencies nationally can easily access each other’s data
and resources. We are making record-breaking investments in R&D to
ensure that, in using artificial intelligence, machine learning and
other technologies, we are building a network where all agencies can
quickly respond to emergencies, investigate crimes, pre-detect terror
threats and mitigate casualties in natural disasters. Our mission is to
make North America safer by making every community smarter and
stronger,” said Simon Angove, CEO of CentralSquare.
CentralSquare will continue to support and upgrade all Tellus products
for current customers, irrespective of the CAD system that an agency
uses, ensuring that citizens can benefit from faster response to
emergencies. Financial terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed.
About CentralSquare
Formed by the merger of Superion, TriTech along with Zuercher, and the
public sector and healthcare business of Aptean, CentralSquare is an
industry leader in public safety and public administration software,
serving over 7,650 organizations from the largest metropolitan city to
counties and towns of every size across North America. Its technology
platform provides solutions for public safety, including 911, computer
aided dispatch, records management, mobile, citations, evidence
management and corrections. For public administration agencies,
CentralSquare provides software for finance, human capital management,
payroll, utility billing, citizen engagement, asset management,
regulatory compliance and community development. For hospitals and
clinicians, it provides patient information, compliance and analytics
software. CentralSquare’s broad, unified and agile software suite serves
3 in 4 citizens across North America. More information is available at
CentralSquare.com
About Tellus
Tellus, is a standards-based information-sharing technology that
connects and integrates with most independent CAD systems. By joining
CAD systems together, dispatchers can correctly identify
closest-available resources and coordinate emergency response across
many agencies and jurisdictions. More information is available at
Tellus.us.
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