Interoperability has long been a buzzword in the law enforcement and other public safety professions. Usually, the term applies to interagency radio or police and fire communications, but it can also apply to other communications tools.

Since 2008, CentralSquare has been developing and implementing an interoperability technology that allows 911 call centers to share computer-aided dispatch (CAD) information. Last year, this CAD to CAD software product was rebranded as Unify.

CentralSquare’s Unify works with any CAD system and allows emergency call center personnel to see assets from other agencies in the area. This means that with permission through a mutual aid agreement a dispatcher can send a unit from another agency, county, or city to an emergency right from their own CAD because it is closer to the people in need or because it possesses capabilities that are currently not available in their jurisdiction.

Unify allows agencies to build cooperative CAD networks in the same geographic region and among different call centers. “At some point an emergency call center needs to talk to somebody outside your zone, and they’re going to be on a different CAD systems, or could be,” says Scott Panacek, product manager for CentralSquare. “So that’s where Unify comes in; it provides a standard way to communicate.”

Panacek likens CentralSquare’s vendor agnostic Unify technology to a language translator. “Let’s say you had three law enforcement officers collaborating on the same incident. But one spoke English, one spoke Spanish, and one spoke Portuguese. They would need a translator. So that’s kind of what the Unify system does for different CAD systems. It allows CAD functions like dispatching units to happen from CAD vendor to CAD vendor.” Panacek stresses that none of the participants has to be using CentralSquare’s CAD in order to build a CAD to CAD network with Unify. They do, however, all have to have a subscription to Unify.

What makes Unify capable of communicating across so many different CAD systems from different CAD vendors is CentralSquare’s open application programming interface (API), according to Panacek.

“We’ve got open API that we provide to any CAD vendor, and it exposes the commands and rules that their system need to communicate with another agency’s system,” he explains. “There’s a data map that they can copy their data and their codes into. So everything maps to something common in the middle.”

When using Unify, an emergency communicator can see all of the CAD-visible assets from the participating agencies. With permission from the owners of the assets, the communicator can dispatch them to incidents in another response area or jurisdiction.

Panacek says the responding units are dispatched via their agencies existing mobile system . For the emergency communications personnel, using Unify does not change their procedures or what they see on the screen. The only difference is that it adds commands for mutual aid.

The primary benefit of Unify for the public, for emergency responders, and for 911 centers is that it saves time. Cross-jurisdiction dispatch of public safety assets can literally save lives by facilitating faster response. For emergency responders it can reduce travel time, making it easier for agencies with personnel shortages to answer more calls.

Emergency communications centers are also experiencing personnel shortages, and Unify can also help them save time. “They don’t have to hunt around searching for the proper person to call and spend time on the phone asking for assistance,” Panacek says.

Unify can also let an overwhelmed communications center ask for help from another in their CAD-to-CAD network. “If they’re linked together, one communications center can pick up the call and get the units on the way for the other center,” Panacek says.

Unify CAD to CAD is available now.