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MONTGOMERY COUNTY'S PS-2000 NEARS COMPLETION
Montgomery County continues to push ahead with its digital trunked radio system, part of a larger project dubbed "Public Safety 2000." Issues with vendors, among other problems, had stalled the progress. But if the $150 million project continues to go as planned, the county's 9-1-1 dispatch facility will officially come online from the new public safety communications center (PSCC) on April 13.
Steve Souder, the center's director, says the new facility will be the largest in the state, and will be among the most technically advanced in the nation. It has been under construction for about two years.
The new dispatch facility, at 1300 Quince Orchard Boulevard in Gaithersburg, occupies an L-shaped room, about five times larger than the existing center at 120 Maryland Avenue in Rockville. Police dispatchers will be on one side, fire/EMS dispatchers on the other, with 9-1-1 call-takers in the center. The PSCC's lower floor includes rooms with racks of electronics for the computer-aided dispatch (CAD), mobile data computers (MDC), fiber and phone networks.
When the facility opens, it promises to offer some of the most sophisticated technology available to the emergency services. The locations of patrol cars and fire/EMS apparatus will be superimposed over GIS maps with important data including contours for most every building in the county and fire hydrant locations.
The county's new traffic management center (TMC) and emergency operations center (EOC) are under construction near the same room where the dispatchers and call-takers will sit. The goal will be to allow both PSCC and TMC the ability to access the county's and state's 2000 traffic cameras and traffic sensors.
Integrating TMC's network of sensors with the CAD is a long-term goal several years away. At least in theory, the computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system will eventually be
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