iXP Conducts Assessment of Communications Center Operation, Technologies, and Facility for The University of Connecticut

Sector: Higher Education

Focus: Communications Center Assessment

Started: 2008

Situation

The University of Connecticut - Storrs - is a rural campus located in the Town of Mansfield, with a student population of over 20,000. The sprawling campus covers over 3,000 acres and has more then 23 miles of dedicated roadways within the campus. With its own electrical, water, sewage treatment, and waste disposal facilities, in addition to its size and student population, the University functions much like a city. Unlike many university campuses, the University's Division of Public and Environmental Services provides Fire and EMS services to the campus as well as Police services. In addition, the Department's Communications Center is a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) - E9-1-1 call center. The Division of Public and Environmental Safety is continually seeking ways to provide a safer environment for its students, faculty, staff and visitors on its campus. One initiative the Department was exploring was developing and monitoring a campus wide CCTV system that would be monitored their Communications Center personnel. The Department was concerned that their current facility, operations and technology infrastructure would not be able to support the initiative.

Solution

iXP was engaged by The University of Connecticut to review and assess the Division of Public and Environmental Safety's Communications Center operations (current processes, procedures, workload and the operational impact of the technology), technologies (CAD, RMS, CCTV, E9-1-1, Alarms, Radio, etc.) and facility (utilities, single points of failure, work place efficiency, etc.) to support the service levels required by both their Police and Fire Departments and the University. This information determined staffing functional and performance requirements, the best possible utilization of existing technology, systems, and the available space to facilitate the design of a larger Communications Center. The larger center would support their desire to provide proactive monitoring of a planned campus-wide CCTV system. Additionally, the Assessment produced recommendations regarding new technology and solutions that University of Connecticut could employ to increase the efficiency of the operations of the Communications Center and public safety on the campus.

We also examined the campus and determined priority CCTV camera locations with the possible use of Smart-CCTV technology to help the University in the planning and designing of a University wide Smart-CCTV system. The added workload to the Communications Center staff with regards to proactively monitoring a University wide CCTV system was also addressed in the Communications Center operations assessment.

Result

Currently iXP is working with The University of Connecticut in an implementation of a campus Smart-CCTV pilot program.

Value Delivered. Problem Solved.