Bridging the Gap Between Security Technology and Emergency Response

Hey, everybody, and welcome back to ProAV today. As always, I'm your host, Ben Thomas. And before we dig into our conversation today, wanted to give a big shout out to all first responders and, folks really in in the the world of emergency response. And I wanna also deal of line from from one of my colleagues that I heard recently is that, some heroes also wear headsets. So in that first responder emergency response community, I'm I'm including, you know, operations center, operators and folks who are taking a lot of those calls and really relaying a lot of that information. I include you in that thank you. And, you know, you're you're so appreciated, and we appreciate the work that that you're doing and the impact that you're having. And if you're listening to this asking why the heck I'm I'm starting with thank yous, I think you probably have figured out by now either by reading the lower third on the bottom or listening to the conversation is Our conversation today skews a little bit more towards the world of technology and emergency response. It's a it's a world that our technology community continues to empower, but there's always questions and challenges and and discussions that that need to continue happening. And and I wanna have that conversation today and really foster a lot of that, those questions. So I brought on somebody who's far smarter than me in this area, far smarter than most folks that I know in the world of emergency response and kind of that public sector world anyway, and that's Jamison Peevyhouse from RapidSOS. Jamison is the VP of public safety over there. Jamison, thanks so much for coming on. Bean, I really appreciate being here, sir. Thank you. Well, it's great to have you, and I appreciate you sitting through the, the far too wordy monologue off the top there. But I wanna give you second, really to ask at a high level, you know, Rapid SOS, fantastic company, really helping, I I think bridging the gap between a lot of those what I would call, I don't know, the off the grid security, providers is the right word, but maybe those disconnected security tools, and, and capabilities, connecting them with emergency response. That's one of the things you guys are great at. What what specifically is your job over there and and getting to oversee the world of public safety? Thank you for that, sir. So my job really is is to empower the team, to focus and to support public safety at large. I mean, we're We're an intelligent safety platform that links life saving data from over five hundred million devices into these common centers, and now in centers all across the United States, Canada, and other countries as well, and to ensure that data is is, providing the right manner to ensure it's ensure it's used to ensure that they will have training, etcetera, We have to have a full team of experts to do that. And today, the team, I I have the honor of leading, has over five hundred years of experience in the Thompson Emergency Services. So we just don't come at this. That's an aspect of, you know, hey, we have to do this. That's just how or whomever we seek out subject matter experts in public safety to ensure that every citizen is protected with the information they have in the palm of their hand, in their vehicle, in their home or whatever. But also, the telecommunicators have access training education about that, type of data flow. Well, Jamison, I wanna ask. So a lot of times, you know, especially folks who listen to the show on a regular basis, we're very familiar with, maybe the more the command and control center side of of the emergency response world. And you know, integrating displays and audio systems and building IT systems and obviously even the furniture infrastructure. But a lot of times, we don't get to have the conversations about you know, the SaaS platforms and the decentralized data sources and things like that. And that's a place really that that you guys specialize But but to really start off, you know, the conversation, I wanna ask really how, you know, how our emergency response organizations kinda starting right now. Right? They've obviously kinda got the nucleus of the dispatch center, the emergency response center. But what are some of the common challenges right now that they may not have access to data wise, things like that. Yeah. That's a great question, Ben. If you think about emergency services, an where that call actually starts in the comm center. Typically, it's a human interacting with an emergency, the immersed in an environment that is overwhelming to their senses. Right? They're seeing things, they're hearing things, they may be smelling things that they've never experienced before. And then they call nine one one to try to report that. And in that sensory overload environment, we are relying on an analog, very slow medium to ask questions back and forth and interrogate the caller, what's going on, where are you at, what's the severity of injuries, and that person is is overwhelmed. And so many times you listen to the tapes, sometimes they're very calm. Sometimes they are explosive. Sometimes they are very, agitated. Sometimes they can't even formulate an entire sentence So how do we ensure that we're moving past that? That starts the the emergency. Right? That starts that response. And if we can't source, adequate information about the level and severity of that response, the correct location, we can't have an adequate response level at the get go. And so we are always behind the eight ball. What data has done for us is given us information about that incident. Specific to the location at time of incident. So no longer do I have to wait for a person to drive by a car crash. And have the wherewithal in that moment to dial nine one one or worse to drive by the car crash and think, well, somebody else has already called. So I'm not going to call. That delay is is life threatening. But today, sensors from the vehicle, sensors from our phones, etcetera, applications, are sending that information into the comm center. So we see the severity, the location, the type of incident as a damn vault, And we can start the dispatch function on that based upon the information we're receiving. And then we know when the phone rings, that person on that scene should be validating and providing additional contextual information about what we already know. And that has changed public safety in the last few years. And we're excited about being on the forefront of that. Well, it's a great point that you mentioned. Right? And, you know, you know, when when somebody calls in to report an emergency or or has a a a life threatening situation, you know, and for a while, they have been the source of truth or information until those first responders or or additional witnesses get out there. Right? You mentioned, you know, when your fight or flight senses are going you you're not picking up on all the nuance of the situation and and you're you don't necessarily even know maybe where you are or what time a fire started or what time you saw a car crash And, you know, having that that additional information is incredibly validating because it allows you to be to be a little bit more proactive, what are some of those data points? I know you talked about, you know, specifically incidents on the road, but what are some of those other data points, even across emergencies that are important to those those emergency response organizations. Oh, absolutely. So I'm one of our primary partners. Apple has a watch. Basically, if you fall, if you're biking or whatever, you fall off your bike, the impact is significant enough to to trigger the g forces inside of that watch. That watch understands, hey, this person may be injured. It first attempts to notify you that's wearing the watch. If there's no response, that watch will initiate a call into nine one one to lay your information about that person to the comm center and said, hey, this person may be unconscious. Here's their location. For vehicles, man, the the amount of trauma we have seen from legal accidents, is is severe. However, is that first golden hour of response to get them to a level one trauma center or get them to local to be able to to stabilize that person every second that we can save in that process and understand that emergency better is saving lives. And so things such as, passed by an accident There was a lot of damage to the vehicle. Well, crumple zones are very misleading in the amount of damage that we have. But the vehicle tells me The vehicle traveling at forty five miles an hour in this direction, it came to a sudden stop with seven Jesus of force. Three airbags deployed. There were four occupants. Only two were actually restrained there was a side impact at the initial internal impact. That type of information is life changing and life saving. And those are things that we would never be able to glean from a human who's on the scene trying to tell us information. And so now we have that would be like a level two response or level three response with multiple units. Or it may be a helicopter to start that process faster. And is that typically instantaneous or or how quickly is that data transmitted? It is instantaneous. And we've done a lot of tests across the country, of course, here in the US and Canada as well, within our partner Series six m. And, like, as soon as that incident occurs, that information's coming up inside of our portal inside the comm center that we give to them for free. And they see the information, they see the location on the map, and then the phone call happens immediately after that. And so understanding, like, man, this is amazing. And we always talk about the health and safety of the human in the public, but it's also the health and safety dealer communicator, and and been for for fifty years. In the comm center, we have been working and then the now on phone ring. And there is there is a pretty few seconds there. Toyl telecommunications has to get their mind set and ready. So when they pick up that phone, whatever's on the other end of that line, they're gonna have to handle. And it might be simple. It may be a, you know, a loose animal in the neighborhood or it may be someone whose child has just drowned in the swimming pool. And we never know what that is until we pick that phone up. We start the interrogation. That cumulative stress and trauma on the telecommunicator is terrible. I can tell you from experience. My friends, myself, my families, it's terrible. Today, being able to give them information before that phone rings, they see it on the screen, They understand the data behind it. They know the exact location. They're like, okay. This is gonna be a bad one. And the phone rings. Now when where's your emergency? I see you're reporting the accident here. Do you have any additional information? Is it a blue GMC? Okay. Thank you very much. That process now reduces that stress level to the communicator, and we see longevity in that one starting to to actually mature. Instead of people staying in for three to four years, and then having to leave because of stress impairment. Well, really I've got a couple follow-up questions. You know, we even during our our our pre interview discussion, you know, I I was thinking about this because, you know, it it I I live in Dallas, so live here in Texas, which is by no means a rural area anymore, but You know, a lot of these technical applications are incredibly important for more rural and municipal areas. Right? Imagine now you know, seeing in Texas, I'm an hour, hour and a half away from, you know, not, you know, not being able to see anybody for miles and miles. Right? There's still a level of emergency response that has to happen not only on those highways, but burning buildings, accidents, injury reports, things like that. How well does technology like this translate to the those rural areas as well? Great. Great. Great. Fall on point. I would say first of all that if you're in Dallas, you're an hour and a half away from being in Dallas. So could we think about what technology has done, particularly the advance of broadband throughout the US, right, really getting broadband to the rural areas. Has allowed us to have an explosion of devices and availability of IoT in a myriad of applications. We were talking earlier about school safety. Right. No longer do you have to live in a metropolitan area with a solid internet backbone to be able to have, you know, a different level of security and safety for that campus. That is now available everywhere in the US. No longer no longer, we're just like, hey. Only the rich people can afford cell phones. We saw that process. Right? And now it's two or three devices per human. We're seeing the same thing happen in smaller communities. And so even as they build new buildings and people are being getting to think about, hey, how do we have all this access points in here? What's the safety security want this? What's the access control we want in this building? That information's incredibly powerful. How are we seeing that impact public safety even in rural areas? You talked about fire alarms, fires in a building. Right. If I have a fire alarm, The majority of fire alarms across the US, very high false positives. Eighty five, ninety percent of those are false alarms. Right? And that creates like a nomenclature of well, it's it's an alarm. We'll start a vehicle, maybe it's an emergency response. However, in a connected building. If I have a sensor go off for a smoke detector, and then all of a sudden I have a temperature sensor in the thermostat says, hey, this is increased two degrees Fahrenheit in the last thirty minutes. And there's water flow in this room and the adjoining room is the alarm is not going off. That's a working structure fire. And if the building can tell me the number of MAC addresses that have been assigned out to cellular devices inside this building in the last thirty minutes, that gives me a pretty good approximation of how many people are inside the building a time of incident. Wow. What have we changed there? Now it's, you know, it's two or three battalion responses know we're gonna have to have a couple of ambulances for folks who have smoking inhalation, and we're getting there faster, and we're getting there with with better equipment and having what I would call a wiser response on the front end. There are a lot of studies about how burning structures, particularly how it rises. Those first few minutes literally sixty ninety, one hundred and twenty seconds. If we can get ahead of that curve, the threat to life drops significantly. But if we're behind that curve, the recovery process is much deeper. It takes so much longer, and there's, it requires more resources as well. Well, you mentioned kind of, structure fires. I think that's a good transition. We we spent a lot of the conversations so far on what I would call the public. Side of things. Right? You're talking about, you know, road infrastructures, even schools and, and, you know, publicly accessible areas. But one of the places that I wanna ask specifically about is that private sector. Right? Even here in our building, we've got security systems. We've got access control systems, fire alarms, things like that. And I would I would venture to say that that's kind of a closed loop ecosystem. Right? And and there is data that can be effectively transmitted to the emergency response centers from a lot of these private spaces. How do you find that balance as maybe a a business owner or someone who owns a a piece of private property, you know, what sort of data points are they willing to give up or are or are they at scale to allow things like emergency response to be better notified. You know, for for so long, we've only thought about emergency response as my local jurisdiction. The jurisdiction have an authority. I'm only concerned about things in my jurisdiction. I only purchased things in my jurisdiction. But I think about what we've been doing with Honeywell. One of the largest providers of of alarms inside the entire really the globe. And the fact that they partner with us at that level creates a different dynamic for every locality throughout the US. There's probably not many localities that don't have a Honeywell sensor somewhere in their jurisdiction. And I think about that, I think instead of having to go to ETCC and have them partner with each school to maybe get their data into a platform of time of emergency, That's a very small loop, but it's very hard to close. But if I go to the providers, like Honeywell who are on the bleeding edge of technology and looking at AI implications, I can partner with them for all their alarm systems throughout the entire US, and now that scalability is massive. And every emergency communication center, every telecommunicator is gonna have the same access to lifesaving data in rural Tennessee as we do in New York City. And that is amazing because now we have a a faster response for us. And the comm center didn't really have to do anything. They don't have to go ahead and source the information. So we're up at SOS steps in as being that that gateway between these, providers of data at scale and to the comm center. And we talk about that being where the global solutions marry to that local intelligence. Because I can have a global solution, but having local responders who understand my process and understand my politics and my, protocols That local intelligence is incredibly important for having a safe response. And I love being at the nexus between those two things. Well, Javis said I've gotta play devil's advocate here. Right? And, you know, we're we're in a world right now where information is currency. Right? Data is currency for a lot of people. And you know, someone might hear, oh, I I can integrate a device and they're, you know, I could get the fire emergency response here five minutes quicker. But, you you know, there's that natural fear and apprehension, especially as you mentioned tools like AI and predictive analytics machine learning where there might be people who might have a little bit of hesitant see. Do you do you see that regularly? Is that something that you guys face, or is it is it something where folks are like, hey, this could be potentially life saving. I I'm willing to give this information up. Well, I will tell you that one of the hardest things to overcome in public safety, has been changed. Right? It's we get into a very comfortable zone to response, and we know what to expect. And injecting things like a data flow is a change in that workflow. But what we have found is if we integrate the data into the current workflows, we ensure that that that is protected, that we are providing HIPAA compliance SOC two, type of compliance, those things that really matter, it's trusted now. And having a background that looks saved in our team, going out and speaking to individual ECCs, that trust begins to build. And over time, what we've seen is now I trust the data, actually more than I trust the human because the human is fallible. The human is is really stating this moment of just intense overload. But that data point, that sensor, that thermostat, whatever it may be, is only reporting the true nature of what's going on in that scene. And so now the data becomes actually more, precise than the human element. And the data is providing us more information to take the human element element out of maybe I can resolve this emergency before the human gets on the scene. And isn't that while we're in public safety? It's really to change lives. Right? You ask every person Why are they getting public safety? I wanna save lives. The best way to save lives, reduce emergencies. And that's where we sit. Well, I think that's, I mean, even in general, just a great response to to a lot of the reluctance to automation and new technologies is the idea that look, we recognize change is difficult. But at the end of the day, it's about, you know, improving your life, right, whether that's access to more safety tools or, making things, you know, from the world of robotics, doing things that humans shouldn't be or or, probably can't do. Right? And and I think that's one of the battles that we face a lot of times as a technology community is that there's a lot of fear and apprehension of the unknown. And and even just just, you know, anecdotally as I've been able to really learn a lot more about kinda some of the work that you guys are doing at rapid s o at rapid SOS and even really in the world of public sector is that, you know, there are a lot of technologies that exist that the look really doesn't know about for one reason or another. One of the things that jumps out to me is really the idea of text to nine one one. Right? I bet you if you it and I'm pretty technologically advanced and things like that. And and I didn't even know that that existed till, like, three months ago. Right? There's a lot of education that has to occur. So I wanna ask, you know, as as you know, maybe an opera not necessarily an operator, but maybe a decision maker or or a manager level at a at an emergency operations at our emergency response center. How much how often do you find folks like that really having to do education not only to the public, but even to some of those providers, the Honeywells of the world that you mentioned, to have those conversations. How much how often do you have do you find them having to have that conversation? That that's a great point. And I think about how we work with with our b to b partners, run a business to business partners, explain to them how, emergency response works varies by every city, right, but every response jurisdiction is a little bit different. So we use and utilize the the professionalism and the history and the experience of our public safety team to inform them on better decisions. And what we find is they come with a great idea. I'm like, that's fantastic. But let's look at the workflow from the standpoint of your customer, the m customer. Right? They're in an emergency. What's the most important information that we need to get into the now and center immediately and what's additional information needs to follow-up. And what we have found is our partners are very responsive to that. Their end goal is to protect their customers. Whatever the platform they may have, solution they may have, they want to provide protection and safety to their customers. I think about Uber, and that stands with us. They want their riders and their drivers to be protected. And so a solution set that says, how do we work best with public safety to ensure that if anything happens, there's an accident? How do my customers get a higher level of service utilizing my solution and my platform through Rapid SOS. And that's been really part of our core values that trust and safety bleeds over into b to b, all the way through public safety, and you start closing this gap around the citizens that we serve, whether they be a customer, they just be a local citizen than I serve on daily basis. You know, it's interesting. I love that you mentioned the Uber example. Right? Because it's it is taking data that has you've opted into right with your cell phone, whether it's accelerometer data, whether it's usage data, things like that. You could tell when somebody's been in a crash. But You know, obviously, the the world of public safety continues to evolve as, you know, not only the data changes, but our threats continue to change. Right? You see I I even hate to use this example. Right? But school shootings and security breaches and and, you know, threats inside churches and houses of worship and public places. The threats continue to evolve. What are some of the ways that, you know, you're you're gathering data and you need ways to even be proactive and preventative because transparently, unless you've got something like like, you know, shot detection system, you're not gonna have that data point. Right? Because there's not a fire alarm alarm that's going off. There's not all these different alarms that are going off. How do you continue to evolve as new threats continue to emerge? Further, I'm so glad you brought this up. One of the ways that we have looked at the data from from, you know, critical incidents such as an active assignment. Whether that be, you know, school setting, campus setting, church setting, etcetera, is we look at the information as it comes into the ECC. Right. So typically, it's a very nominal day And all of a sudden, on average, there's a spike between fifteen and twenty two thousand percent increase in call volume. And then it drops off, and then the radio traffic in response spikes it as well, and it continues for the first sixty minutes. So everything left a bang left of the incident, something somebody reporting shots being fired is a typical day. How do we get left to bank for that? One of our partners. Zero eyes. Fantastic. If you have not researched them, please do. They integrate to your already existing cameras that you have inside of your school, your church, your hospital, your commercial building. And if someone walks into a frame of that camera carrying a weapon, Not shotspotter, not not listening to shots being fired, but carrying a weapon. It automatically detects that weapon It sends an immediate notification to their twenty four hour monitoring center, which is staffed by the retired law enforcement or special operations forces. And then we're gonna say, yep, That's not a cop. That's in a protected zone. That is a weapon. They have three seconds. They hit that information. It goes directly to the comm center in the hands of first responders. Comes up on the map, you see the person, you see the description, you see exactly where they're at in the building. If there's an indoor map there, you see where they're standing in the building, as they're moving through that time and space, you get updates in their location. Now your response is started before the shots are even being fired. And on average, An active shooter event, the suspect will be outside the perimeter, in the field of view to the camera, four to six minutes before ending the building. Do you know how many officers we can get on scene in four minutes with a with a suspect armed in a gun free zone? That changes everything about how we think about respondents to not quite active assailants, right, that left a bank. And I I talk about zero eyes in that platform everywhere I go because it is so powerful. The safety and security it provides to every citizen is incredible. Will it solve all issues? Of course not. But will it solve the the most, societal impacting ones? Yeah. Yeah. It can. Well, and I love that you mentioned that too. Right? Because that that really is the crossover point a lot of times between our collective communities. Right? Normally, folks who are listeners and community members of this show skew a little bit more towards the hardware manufacturer. The service provide side of things. And and I think you really kind of hit the nail on the head where, look, there is a natural integration between hardware capabilities and the functionality of existing technology, whether it's in a building, whether it's in a park, whether it's, you know, wherever you've got your techno you know, maybe it's at home, right, wherever your technology is installed. And the service provider and emergency response side of things, and it's so incredible to see you know, as a community that we're willing to have those cross departmental conversations, if you will. Right? We we've lived in a world for a long time where not everybody, but but a lot of folks have been more concerned about guarding the secret sauce. And I think that as our communities collectively continue to expand even beyond just the world of emergency response. You you, you know, you look at things like, access control in general in airports. And you know, hardened places like, you know, government buildings and things like that. It's far larger than just the world of immediate emergency response. We have to keep having those conversations. And look, I I am willing to be the first person to admit to you. I have a lot more questions in this world for for the world of public safety and then how technology integrates that I do a lot of other areas. But it's a world that continually fascinates me because it's the true intersection of At the end of the line, humans on the worst day of their lives in most cases and how technology can help save their lives and or make their lives literally better at a moment's notice. Yes, sir. We think about that in where we're going as a as an organization, as an industry in public safety, And really the end goal for us, we wanna see call volumes and emergencies drop significantly in the next eighteen months. We wanna start preventing emergencies so that the human doesn't have to be injured. Doesn't have to pay for the car to be repaired. Doesn't have to miss time off from work. Doesn't get, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in hospital bills. If we can do that, wow. Man, that's that's incredible for the society as a whole. Doesn't replace public safety. We're always gonna have some emergencies, but if we can reduce the ones that are the most costly, both to human interactions and human impacts, we've done something. And as a Rapid SOS, it's a core mission. Like, we definitely wanna help out an information that's going on, but we wanna start finding ways to prevent those as well so that we can actually provide a deeper, I guess, and say, value to that trust and safety we've been building now for the last ten years. Well, it's incredible to hear. And I'll tell you this. I know we're gonna have some people asking questions. How can, you know, I get more involved with the public safety community. How can I, create technology that's more available from a data transmission standpoint? And I'll just ask you, you know, if people are interested in learning more, maybe specifically about Rapid SOS or some potential partnership collaboration opportunities. What's the best way to reach out to you? You can find me on LinkedIn, j p v house, at rapid s o s dot com. I always joke this common spelling. But it's j p e v y h o o c. And be happy to connect you to the right people internally. Be happy to answer any questions you may have concerns you may have as well. We love having good conversations, but things that we may learn, from your business that may be applicable to public safety and finding a way to really marry those two things together, both for the support of the general public, but also specifically the customers that you serve on a daily basis. Well, Jamieson, look, we appreciate you having you on. Yeah. I I'll tell you this. We're gonna have to find a reason to have you back on the show soon because Anytime. This is one of the top really in our community right now where there is a lack of education because when you look at the world of installed technology and integrated technology, for a long time, it's been a nice to have, whether that's a conference room, whether that's, you know, a hotel, whether that's, you know, you name it. Right? It's great to have a lot of that technology, But we're at a point now where the capabilities really allow us to cross over into a lot of different industries, emergency response being one of those. So I I'm sure we'll find a way to have you on the show again here soon and, continue to to pick your brain a little bit more. Sounds great, man. Really appreciate it, sir. Well, thank you, Jamieson, and thank you to you for tuning in as well. We appreciate you. Be sure to like and subscribe and check us out again next time on Pro EV today.