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This standard addresses how the emergency communications center (ECC) can incorporate incident processes currently in place to leverage the use of supplemental emergency responders, including dispatches in lieu of law enforcement, for non-violent situations, or as a co-response, pairing law enforcement with behavioral health professionals.

APCO International collaborated with the Center for Social Science Research (CSSR) at George Mason University to study call processing and incident handling times at emergency communications centers (ECCs) in the United States. The aim of the study was to gather data on how long ECCs take to process different incident types, and what factors might affect call processing times.

This operational standard places an emphasis on the need to effectively manage situations with critical decision-making responsibilities. It also offers guidance for emergency communications centers (ECCs) of all sizes on opportunities for employee growth, promotions and development of tomorrow’s leaders.

This standard is intended to equip industry stakeholders, both individuals and agencies, with the tools and perspectives necessary for a proactive approach to detecting and mitigating the stress related challenges of the job of the Public Safety Telecommunicator.

This revision is intended to support every reasonable effort by current ECC Managers to proactively manage public and responder expectations at the local level; support a positive working relationship with the wireless service providers founded on a fundamental understanding of the operational parameters of all wireless E9-1-1 service; along with influencing public policy, including regulatory and legislative action. The ECC Manager should also define, develop, and promulgate performance focused ECC training, maintain active quality assurance efforts, and understand the relationship between these actions and field responder efficiency and safety.

APCO/NENA ANS 2.102.1-2022 Advanced Automatic Crash Notification (AACN) Vehicle Emergency Data Set (VEDS) was developed by a working group consisting of a diverse group of representatives from organizations and agencies of various sizes, locations and responsibilities. This standard provides a common data set used to deliver AACN data to emergency communication centers and responders, identifies crash and medical data elements, and uses a common data exchange format allowing for multiple methods of data transfer and handling.

This standard seeks to serve as a guiding document to assist ECC staff in their efforts to prepare for a multitude of events as they create pre-planning and mitigation documents. This document alone is not meant to serve as a substitute to an individual agency’s plans. It is meant to be thought-provoking and should foster discussion and development of agency specific policy and procedure.

Public Safety Telecommunicators (PSTs) are typically the first layer of response to crisis-based calls and can serve as the initial layer of de-escalation attempts. PST’s must manage a wide range of emergency calls, often involving a variety of behavioral health disorders and conditions. Throughout Emergency Communications Centers there is a demand for skills associated with handling such calls in an appropriate, calming, and professional manner. To reflect the requests and needs for such improvement, APCO has published this standard, which provides a fundamental tool for PSTs. In practice, this standard is written to provide fundamental strategies and responsibilities for the agency, a brief understanding of behavioral health, PST responsibilities, and stress management for the PST. This standard provides procedures and techniques for improved responses for PSTs while handling a call involving a person in crisis.

Over the past generation, our industry has seen myriad changes in the way it operates, is structured, and the way personnel are trained. We have evolved out of necessity to keep pace with our technology driven world as our informational highways and capabilities become larger and faster. This constant evolution has placed new and unforeseen stressors of many natures on our public safety telecommunications personnel, and will continue to do so especially with the advent of visual technology arriving at 9-1-1 consoles in real time every day. These changes, along with the critical need of ensuring the mental health and well-being of all our PST personnel, are the touchstone for the creation of this standard.

It is inherent in the document that from agency to agency there may be nuanced differences impacted by State, County, or Local Laws as well as agency specific policies and procedures. Those differences notwithstanding, from a conceptual standpoint the information contained within the document should give any end-user public safety agency a well-defined blueprint for establishing the critical operational need in protecting the overall mental, physical and emotional well-being of our Public Safety Telecommunicators.

This standard addresses the minimum training requirements, in general, necessary to foster levels of consistency for all personnel in an emergency communications environment assigned to answering TTY/TDD calls for service specifically in the public safety environment. This standard responds to the valid needs of the rapidly expanding and ever-changing industry, providing competent training standards while defining training in certain knowledge, skills, and abilities, and recognizing the need to supplement basic competencies with agency-specific information and existing equipment-use parameters.

This cybersecurity training standard addresses training for ECC staff, including public safety telecommunicators (PSTs), supervisors, ECC management and ECC administration. It also addresses training for personnel who are not in professional technical positions, but who are privileged users with administrative privileges allowing them to handle some technical tasks such as application installation, operating system updates, application administration, database management or system administration.

This standard identifies the core competencies and minimum training requirements for the Public Safety Communications Manager/Director. This position is typically tasked with managing and directing all aspects of a public safety communications center, while effectively utilizing leadership skills, resources, and partnerships in order to successfully provide emergency communications service.

This standard identifies the core competencies and minimum training requirements for Public Safety Communications Center Instructor, herein referred to as Instructor. This position is typically tasked with the delivery of training within the communications agency.

This standard identifies the core competencies and minimum training requirements including radio, computer-aided dispatch and GIS systems for Technicians. Technology is critical to the administration of public safety communications. There is a need to provide a consistent foundation for the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to fulfill this critical function.

This standard identifies the core competencies and minimum training requirements for Quality Assurance Evaluators (QAE). The QAE administers the Quality Assurance/Quality Improvement (QA/QI) process by providing compliance oversight, reviewing, and documenting an evaluation of the level of compliance with agency directives and standards in an ongoing effort to ensure the highest levels of service to the public and emergency responders.

This standard identifies the core competencies and minimum training for individuals performing the task of training coordination.  This position is typically tasked with the planning, development, coordination, implementation, and administration of training within an agency.

The standard identifies minimum training requirements for public safety call takers, fire service dispatchers, law enforcement dispatchers, and emergency medical services (EMS) dispatchers. It is one of many public safety communications training standards that has been developed as a result of APCO’s Project 33® initiated in 1995. This standard is based on research compiled from multiple occupational analysis workshops conducted throughout the nation. Over 100 high-performing public safety telecommunicators representing various agencies participated in these workshops. The draft standard was submitted through three different public review and comment periods before the final draft was completed.

Also read Implementation Guide for APCO ANS Recommended Minimum Training Standards for Public Safety Telecommunicators

This standard identifies the core competencies and minimum training requirements for Public Safety Communications Supervisors. This position is typically tasked with managing daily operations, performing administrative duties and maintaining employee relations. This position provides leadership and guidance to employees in order to achieve the agency’s mission, while providing service to the public and emergency responders.

This standard identifies the core competencies and minimum training requirements for Public Safety Communications Training Officers (CTO). This position is typically tasked with on-the-job training of agency employees on the essential duties and tasks of a Public Safety Communications Telecommunicator.

The Automated Secure Alarm Protocol (ASAP) is a successfully proven data exchange that has demonstrated efficiency and effectiveness in streamlining alarm notifications between alarm monitoring companies and public safety Emergency Communications Centers since 2009. This standard is the product resulting from the joint effort by APCO and The Monitoring Association (TMA) formerly known as the Central Station Alarm Association (CSAA).

Updates include the renaming the introduction of schema version 3.4 including new data fields and message types available to the users of this standard and critical to the mission of public safety. An emphasis on address verification/synchronization between the alarm companies and the ECCs is included. New alarm event types are also introduced as well as methods to indicate that an alarm has been verified positively as a real-life crime, fire, or emergency medical event.

American with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulation requires 9-1-1 and other telephone emergency service providers to provide TTY/TDD users with direct access and an opportunity to benefit from the emergency services that is equal to the opportunity afforded to others. Many of the citizens that are protected by ADA communicate via texting and expect to do the same with a PSCC or PSAP. State and local agencies are being legally directed to identify methods to accept these text messages and must keep up with the citizen’s expectations.

This standard includes information to provide guidance and helpful material regarding the development, maintenance and deployment of a TERT.

The revision of this standard is designed to serve as best practice guidelines and operational models in support of effectively and efficiently processing these calls for service as well as identifying resources available to telecommunicators and law enforcement. This standard presents the response process in a logical progression from initial call intake through comprehensive data and information management.

This standard is a comprehensive analysis of site hardening requirements, with the specific future intention to establish “hardening” standards, which create public safety grade sites. The requirements in this document have been developed by a subcommittee of the APCO Broadband Committee representing government communications system operators, communications systems vendors, representatives from commercial service provider LMR professionals, and broadband industry consultants.

The EIDD provides a standardized, industry-neutral National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) conformant (XML-based) specifications for exchanging emergency incident information to agencies and regions that implement NG9-1-1 and Internet Protocol (IP) based emergency communications systems. Emergency incident information exchanges supported by the EIDD include exchanges between disparate manufacturers’ systems located within one or more public safety agencies and with other incident stakeholders.

Download the EIDD IEPD (zip file), a NIEM-conformant package that describes the construction and content of the EIDD information exchange. It contains all of the schemas necessary to represent and validate the data content of the exchange. It also contains supplemental artifacts, such as documentation, business rules, search and discovery metadata, and sample instances.