I might make a few discrete enquiries when I next speak with an appropriate person and see if they are able to shed any light.
Well, I struck lucky with my first enquiry. The answers I got were :
- AML is working and we can access the endpoint and extract the data
- Our existing control room system integrates with the AML endpoint
- The installation of our existing control room system has, right from day 1 been subject to crashes, freezes and go slows. The reasons behind this have never been successfully dealt with. There are a number of functions that the service would like to turn on but whenever they try, the system threatens to fall over so they remain inactive despite the fact that they would be extremely valuable to us.
- The requirements for the new system included the proven ability to implement AML.
I was aware that another important function promised with this system back on 2014 had never materialised but wasn’t aware that multiple bits of functionality had been affected. No doubt incredibly frustrating for those involved and for frontline staff and imho a complete shambles that has dragged on far too long. Surely the nettle should have been grasped long ago and if a fix couldn’t be found then a new solution should have been sought? Or is that a naive viewpoint?
Just as an aside, I checked the current marketing brochure of the system we currently use and no mention of AML integration but it does bring the prospective purchaser’s attention to “ What3Words integration for location finding”.
Somewhere way up thread, I promised an update on this so….
Our new control / mobilisation system is now up and running as of last month. I attended a fire yesterday and on return to the station, I had reason to drill into the incident log within the new system to find some timings on when I sent various messages etc. In doing so, I came across the AML entries so it clearly works and on the very limited evidence of a single incident, it is both fast and accurate.
The first entry has given a low confidence initial location to the system before the call has even been transferred from the BT 999 centre to our Control Operator, something like 3 seconds into the 999 call. It says low confidence but the GPS coordinates were well within 100m of the actual location.
A second, higher confidence, location is received within 20 seconds of the call starting and that gave a location close enough that I would say it was where the caller was stood when they made the call.
My only issue now is that the postal address this gps coordinate was converted to was inaccurate by a good 5 miles. Not sure if this was due to an incorrect address given by the caller or whether the system somehow assigned a wrong address but fortunately the attending resources were chosen based on the gps coordinates.