Why are 911 Call Centers going away?
The trend is obvious to those who track PSAPs. PSAPs are Public Safety Answering Points. In the US these PSAPs correlate to the 911 call centers that we see on TV or have had the fortune of needing to call when something has gone seriously wrong. The decrease in the number of PSAPs is steady and frequent. Sixty-seven PSAPs have gone away since June of 2018.
| Boundary Type |
06/2018 |
07/2018 |
12/2018 |
01/2019 |
05/2019 |
11 Month Change |
Change % |
| PSAP Boundaries |
5,136 |
5,132 |
5,095 |
5,093 |
5,069 |
(67) |
1.30% |
On the surface this appears to be disturbing but just because a PSAP goes away doesn't mean that the 911 service for that area goes away. It actually can be beneficial because 911 operations become more professional and efficient because while it may look like the PSAPs are going away they are actually being combined into other PSAPs. The result is a stronger PSAP service with better trained operators and more efficient dispatch operations. But as the table above shows the decline has been steady with most of the PSAP counts dropping by a few each month (we don't have data for September through November of 2018) but its not hard to see the general decline:
However, while PSAPs are being consolidated and 911 systems are becoming more efficient the AHJ boundaries are increasing. An AHJ is an Authority Having Jurisdiction area. These are areas where Police, Fire and EMS services are defined. A Police AHJ can have a different boundary than a PSAP, the EMS service area can be still another area and then the Fire protection areas can also be different. Here's an area in Chicago where there are different boundaries for PSAPs, Police, Fire and EMS services. The yellow boundaries are the PSAPs boundaries:
Now we can show the Fire Protection AHJ Boundaries on top of PSAPs. While many of the fire protection boundaries are the same the exposed yellow lines show where there are differences:
The Police AHJ boundaries are also different. In the image below the Westmont Police department has its own boundaries of service that are shown in blue below:
Finally, the EMS AHJ is another area with different boundaries. The purple lines are EMS service areas. The EMS areas cover multiple PSAP, Police and Fire areas:
These specialized service areas are growing somewhat. The chart below shows that each AHJ over the last 11 months:
| Boundary Type |
06/2018 |
07/2018 |
12/2018 |
01/2019 |
05/2019 |
11 Month Change |
Change % |
| EMS AHJ Boundaries |
1,518 |
1,523 |
1,549 |
1,546 |
1,546 |
28 |
1.84% |
| Fire AHJ Boundaries |
1,493 |
1,494 |
1,529 |
1,526 |
1,522 |
29 |
1.94% |
| Police AHJ Boundaries |
1,523 |
1,523 |
1,536 |
1,532 |
1,536 |
13 |
0.85% |
The AHJ boundaries are very useful for home monitoring. We expect that AHJ boundaries will continue to become more prevalent while PSAPs will continue to be combined for the foreseeable future.
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Lamont Norman
Product Manager - GeoEnrichment and Telco
Pitney Bowes
Boulder, CO
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