State of Arkansas

Overview

The Arkansas 911 Board is responsible for the planning, operation, and implementation of the statewide NG9-1-1 Service, as well as the distribution of funds for the maintenance and improvement of the system. In 2020, they began searching for tools to support their transition to Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1). NG9-1-1 aims to improve emergency response times, enhance public safety, and better meet the needs of a technologically advanced society.

The Arkansas 911 Board chose to bring in a vendor for the State NG9-1-1 Implementation instead of building an in-house system. The Board wanted Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) to govern their own data, eliminating the need to delegate quality assurance and control responsibilities to the Arkansas GIS Office. After a competitive bid process, 1Spatial’s Public Safety NG9-1-1 Enterprise Solution was selected. It was chosen for its ability to deliver the required functionality within a few months, in addition to its flexibility to support other data initiatives.

Challenge

To implement geospatial 9-1-1 call routing, it takes significant coordination with local data providers to aggregate the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) required datasets (Address Points, Road Centerlines, Emergency Service Boundaries, PSAP Boundaries, and Provisioning Boundaries). NENA has published, and continues to author, new standards for geospatial data supporting NG9-1-1. Arkansas will use these standards as a statewide baseline for provisioning data into the State’s Next Generation Core Services (NGCS).

Solution

To meet Arkansas’s NG9-1-1 data needs, they implemented 1Spatial’s Public Safety NG9-1-1 Enterprise Solution. This solution includes 1Integrate and 1Data Gateway preconfigured with the NENA-based NG9-1-1 Rules Package, serving all state and local governments (including contractors). It aggregates data from PSAPs, validates NG9-1-1 datasets, and produces a spatial report for the PSAP. To facilitate adoption, 1Spatial and the Arkansas GIS Office hosted training sessions for counties and PSAPs.

Advantages of the Solution

1Spatial deployed the solution based on Arkansas-specific requirements, focusing on configuration over custom development. The solution was operational within three months, allowing PSAPs to directly work with the system and improve their NG9-1-1 data. The quick deployment resulted in an immediate return on investment for Arkansas.

The configurable nature of the solution ensures timely compliance with NENA’s standards and guidelines. The 1Spatial Public Safety NG9-1-1 Enterprise Solution empowers counties and PSAPs to operate independently, automating data submittal once it meets State standards. PSAPs can easily drag-and-drop data into the validation/aggregation portal and receive spatial pinpoint accuracy reports, enabling a more efficient data clean-up process. 

Benefits 

1Spatial’s Public Safety NG9-1-1 Enterprise Solution provides the following benefits to the State of Arkansas:  

• Precisely demarcates gaps, overlaps, and incomplete data.
• Converts local data to Arkansas’s Data Standard for NG9-1-1. 

• Precisely pinpoints problems/errors within and between jurisdictions.  
• Consistently measures progress over time as improvements are executed.
• Provides a common platform for efficient data rollups, from Arkansas PSAPs to the State.  
• Enable continuous, secure, and consistent updates, realizing significant economies of scale.

Future

NENA continually updates geospatial data standards for NG9-1-1, and 1Spatial is actively involved with NENA to remain current with these updates. Arkansas adopts these standards as a statewide baseline, providing data to the State’s NGCS. 1Spatial’s implementation may expand to support a data validation/integration workflow for Arkansas’s statewide parcel layer, with ongoing discussions with the Arkansas GIS Office.