Houston 911 Center To Use Information Management Solution

  • Jul 08, 2008

NICE Systems recently announced the City of Houston, has selected NICE Inform for its 911 Center. The consolidated center for the United States' fourth largest city, the Houston Emergency Center (HEC) is equipped with state-of-the-art technology. The City of Houston recently added NICE Inform and other NICE solutions to its Emergency Center for their unique ability to capture and manage high volumes of critical emergency communications and other vital multimedia incident information.

Houston consolidated its three communications centers into a single public safety answering point in 2003 and invested in advanced emergency communications technology, but still employed separate voice-only recording solutions for police, fire and emergency medical services (EMS). With the NICE solutions, including NICE Inform, the three departments will now be able to share a single, partitioned and redundant solution for recording and reviewing emergency communications, which will not only enhance reliability, but reduce the department's overhead and technical support requirements as well.

"The NICE solutions are the next step in our evolution as a technologically-advanced emergency communications center," said Matt Hyde, Chief Technology Officer for the Houston Emergency Center. "NICE offered us advanced capabilities, and greater reliability, ease-of-use and scalability than we had before. With NICE Inform, we're also laying the foundation to be able to extend our recording capability beyond voice to include data and video too."

"The Houston Emergency Center is one of the most impressive and technologically-advanced emergency communications centers in the United States," said Chris Wooten, President, Security Division Americas, NICE. "We are very proud that the City of Houston has expanded its relationship with NICE by selecting NICE Inform and other NICE solutions for its advanced emergency communication facility."

NICE Inform is a full-spectrum multimedia incident information management solution for the security market. It provides ground-breaking capabilities for effectively managing incident information from various sources, including audio, video, text and data, streamlining information-sharing, investigations and evidence delivery.

The capabilities of NICE Inform also enable agencies and command and control centers to move beyond simply capturing voice communications to centrally capturing and managing many different types of multimedia information central to investigations, such as video, mug shots, affidavits and incident reports. The unique comprehensive capabilities of NICE Inform can be tailored to the specific needs of command and control centers for first responders and homeland security, transportation, government and private sector organizations, and deliver improved collaboration and operational efficiency to enhance safety and security.

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