High Point 911 Backup Plan

(April 1, 2015)

General Purpose It is the purpose of this back up plan to establish policies and procedures to receive and route 911 calls in the City of High Point, North Carolina and to provide the NC 911 Board with the information for the update of the current equipment in the primary PSAP. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been signed between High Point 911 and Guilford-Metro 911. The MOU states that Guilford-Metro will allow High Point 911 to collocate at their backup center located at 1002 Meadowood St. Greensboro, NC 27403. Telephone Equipment/Current High Point 911 serves as the Primary PSAP to which all 911 calls initiated within the City of High Point are routed. The center has (8) enhanced 911 trunks which are provided by AT&T phone company. The center is served by a Cassidian (formally PLANT-CML) ECS1000 telephone switch. The telephone switch will reach “end of life” and will no longer be supported by the manufacturer after December 31st, 2015. The center currently has (10) consoles/workstations which are equipped with Sentinel telephones with automated TDD call taking capability and text to 911 capability utilizing the TTY method. Ecats is capable of capturing data from our 911 lines, but not our administrative lines. With the upgrade to the new Vesta 911 system, we will be able to capture data from our administrative lines as well. A 24/7 maintenance agreement is in place with Wireless Communications for the telephone equipment in the center.

Telephone Equipment/New High Point 911 will replace the current ECS1000 with the Cassidian (formally PLANT-CML) Vesta 911 system, a geo-diverse telephone system that addresses diversity, redundancy and resiliency that is needed for a 911 system capable of processing voice and data. The Vesta 911 system will be divided into two independent halves and continue to work as one system until one side or the other has a failure. At the point of failure, the side unaffected will continue to work independently. Soon after the switch upgrade, we will upgrade the telephone network to an IP based network provided by Intrado/Motorola. This network will be the second step of equipment upgrades needed to meet Next Generation 911 requirements for call taking, text to 911, picture messaging and videos from 911 callers. The Vesta 911 system will be divided into two halves with the primary equipment being located in the equipment room located High Point 911 Public Safety Center at 211 S. Hamilton St., High Point, NC 27260. The second half of the system will be located at Guilford Metro 911’s backup center located at 1002 Meadowood St., Greensboro, NC. The Vesta 911 system will provide geographic diversity as the ANI/ALI controller has two paired sets of servers. The VESTA 911 system is made up of a redundant server pair utilizing Virtual Machine (VM) Technology residing on Side A and Side B of the VESTA 911 system. Each server supports a pair of virtual servers known as the Media Distribution Services (MDS) and Data Distribution Services (DDS) servers in a redundant architecture to each other. Formally these resided on four individual servers but now are virtualized to two redundant hot-standby servers using VM technology. The servers operate with one as the active, the other as a standby - switching instantly on-line should an active server fail. The VESTA 911 system is a robust call processing system for advanced call centers seeking scalable and flexible call handling with maximum system resiliency and redundancy. The VESTA 911 system is architected with no single point of failure utilizing fully integrated Internet Protocol (IP) soft-switch which incorporates automatic server switchover with no loss of calls. All local network switches and gateways are redundant so should any single point fail there is a redundant module that will continue to operate. One set of servers is in an “active” mode and the other set of servers is in “hot standby” mode. Only one set of servers is active at a time and can fully support the functionality of the entire system. In the event of a failure of an “active” server, the “hot standby” is automatically switched into service without the loss of telephone calls. Currently, the delivery of the calls is not over a geo-diverse path and there is only one central office for the phone provider in our area. With the implementation of the new Intrado/Motorola network, an IP based phone network will provide a redundant connection eliminating having a single point of failure from the phone company’s central office. Until the migration of the IP network takes place, both locations will have phone servers and a 250 MB Metro Ethernet fiber connection through Northstate Communications. The High Point 911 PSAP and the Meadowood location are served by different CO’s, and different carriers. North State is the dial tone provider at the High Point 911 location, and AT&T serves Meadowood. Although High Point 911’s ECS-1000 is located in the NorthState central office, High Point 911’s service is provided by AT&T today, including ANI/ALI. (NorthState is only providing admin lines)

There are (10) positions/workstations with (8) existing 911 trunks at High Point 911. Staffing for each shift is (7) Telecommunicators and (1) Supervisor for a total of (8) per shift. Our center will add additional personnel for tactical or emergency events for a total of 10 Telecommunicators. As a part of our upgrade, we are including (10) Mobile Command Post phone units. The Mobile Command Post is a fully functioning 911 call taker workstation with ANI/ALI just like our desktop workstation. The Mobile Command Post allows headset integration with the radio consoles and utilizes a single headset for telephone and radio. The Mobile Command Post unit from Airbus DS is a portable, on-location emergency call center solution. It provides fast, cost-effective backup with complete 9-1-1 call-handling in a Backup PSAP or temporary locations outside of the communications center. The Mobile Command Post units have instant recorder recall with the ability to maintain recordings up to one year. The units are packed in a watertight case with foam padding and set up in minutes, the Mobile Command Post provides a laptop computer, cables and connectors, enabling call centers to operate remotely and successfully under the harshest of circumstances. The Mobile Command Post unit may also be utilized for local/docked functionality. When used with a docking station, its laptop can serve as a standard VESTA911 workstation with familiar 9-1-1 call-taking software, but can be packed in ruggedized rolling case and made remote almost instantly. With the Mobile Command Post unit, 9-1-1 calls can be transferred for dispatching allowing non-essential calls to be shielded and offering dispatchers uninterrupted focus to deal with urgent calls during heavy call volume. The Mobile Command Post unit includes enhanced security features, with all its laptops are configured with firewall, VPN and anti-virus software by default. Its laptop(s) weighs less than ten pounds and each unit carries complete instructions to make setup as easy and quick as possible. Guilford Metro currently utilizes the Viper phone system. With the upgrade to the Vesta 911 system, we are capable of sending Telecommunicators to Guilford Metro’s backup site to answer phones on the (5) Mobile Command Post units located at the backup center while the remaining Telecommunicators will transport the (5) Mobile Command Post units located at High Point 911 to the Guilford Metro Backup Center for a total of (10) redundant call taking positions. Off duty employees will be called in to assist. In the event of a full evacuation, High Point 911 lines are programmed to automatically roll over to Guilford-Metro until our personnel reach the backup center. The automatic roll over is initiated by the on duty Supervisor in the 911 Center by cell phone. It takes approximately 15-20 seconds for 911 lines to roll over. In addition to initiating 911 rollover by cell phone; High Point 911 personnel will contact the NOC Center to “move” the lines manually to the backup center until the issue is resolved. High Point 911 personnel will contact Guilford-Metro personnel, Guilford County EMS and Director to advise them of our center’s evacuation and advise them High Point 911 calls will roll over to their center until we can reach the backup center and have them “moved” there by the NOC Center. High Point 911 and Guilford-Metro currently serve each other as backup when 911 lines roll over during busy times or outages. Police/Fire calls for service will be relayed to our Telecommunicators by utilizing a common

radio channel (GUIL-COM). Calls for service will then be dispatched by portables radios or by the mobile MCC7100 unit our center currently owns until High Point 911’s Telecommunicators reach Guilford-Metro’s Backup Center. It is also possible to move to other locations in the City with CAD access (Police Department, Fire Department) with the Mobile Command Post phone units, portable radios and the center’s mobile MCC 7100 radio unit. The (10) Mobile Command Post phone units, portable radios and the (1) Mobile MCC7100 radio console will be utilized during major events to reduce the workload on the primary PSAP and allow our center the flexibility to report to and operate on the scene of major tactical events inside the City (Furniture Market, Barricaded Subjects, Weather Events, etc). The Mobile Command Post units, portable radios and the (1) Mobile MCC7100 unit will allow our center the flexibility to operate at other locations inside the City (Police Department, Fire Department, etc.) with CAD access in the event Guilford-Metro’s Backup center is unavailable to us. The equipment located at both locations will be under a 24/7 maintenance agreement with Wireless Communications, based in Charlotte, NC. Radio Equipment High Point 911 currently shares a regional Motorola P25 radio network with Guilford-Metro. High Point 911’s radio talk groups are programmed in the MCC7500 radio consoles located at Guilford Metro’s Backup Center. High Point 911 currently owns (1) mobile MCC7100 unit our center will utilize as well. The MCC7100 unit is a mobile application that allows for all of the benefits of a standard MCC7500 console with only a slight reduction in available resources. The MCC7100 unit allows for 30 resources on our system with full encryption capabilities. It comes with all of the peripherals that are available on the standard MCC7500 console, i.e. select and unselect speakers, foot pedal, headset w/boom mic, and standard gooseneck microphone. Network security is provided by two point authentication with a PIN and RSA token code. In addition, the network traffic is routed through a proxy server and Juniper Firewall to ensure network security. We currently have (1) fully redundant radio console at the High Point Radio Shop located at 501 E Commerce Av, High Point, NC 27260.

Recording Equipment High Point 911 currently utilizes the Eventide NexLog IP-Based Recording System capable of P25 trunked and conventional recording/logging, NG9-1-1 (i3) recording/logging with redundant network archive. The (10) portable Command Post units for call taking have instant recording recall (IRR) that will be configured to remain available for a period of six months to one year based on the needs of the department. The (1) Mobile MCC7100 unit will record radio traffic the same as the MCC7500’s to the Eventide NexLog IP-Based Recording System. Our center will utilize Guilford-Metro’s current recording system, Higher Ground, to access needed radio recordings when utilizing their MCC7500’s located at Guilford-Metro’s Backup center.

CAD Equipment High Point 911 and Guilford-Metro currently utilize Sungard-OSSI’s One Solution CAD with mapping (High Point Maps will load with High Point’s data). There will be a server at the DR site that is identical in specification to our current live operations at the primary site. Neverfail software will be utilized to keep the data replicated between the primary site and the DR site. Exact replicas of both CAD and Message Switch will be installed on the server at the DR site and kept 'in sync' using the Neverfail product.

While at Guilford Metro, we will use their existing CAD workstations with a switch to connect to our server. We will have CAD Server 1 located on site at 211 S. Hamilton St and CAD Server 2 located at G-Metro site – so we can access either server off site with our network connection. Both locations will have phone servers and a 250MG Metro Ethernet connection through Northstate Communications. As far as CAD workstations, we have 24/7 keycard access to them at the High Point Fire training center, High Point Police training center and Police Department. With the (1) mobile MCC7100, portable radios and Mobile Command Post phone units as well as CAD workstations at various secure locations within the City, we have a viable secondary backup plan.

A 24/7 maintenance agreement is in place with Sungard-OSSI for CAD related issues. Testing and Set Up at Backup Site and Contingency Plan (Other Off Site Locations) High Point 911 will coordinate/schedule with Guilford-Metro to test every four months and set up at the backup site located at 1002 Meadowood St. Greensboro, NC 27403. High Point 911 will have keycard access to the building 24/7. All High Point 911 dispatch teams will operate from the backup site every four months to ensure the equipment is functioning properly, and to allow employees to be familiar and acclimated to the backup work environment. The Guilford-Metro backup center has 18 available consoles for High Point 911 to utilize. The consoles are equipped with Sungard-OSSI CAD/Mapping and MCC7500 radios with High Point ‘s talk groups. The (10) Mobile Command Post units for phone access will be placed at each console for use. High Point 911 will coordinate/schedule testing every six months with the High Point Fire Department and High Point Police Department to utilize pre-arranged locations as secondary backup should Guilford-Metro’s backup center not be available. The MCC7100 mobile radio unit, portable radios and the Mobile Command Post phone units for phone access will allow our center the flexibility to move to locations within the City with Sungard-OSSI CAD/Mapping access, thus giving us a fully functioning secondary backup option and the ability to operate outside of the center for large scale tactical situations or events such as the Furniture Market. (5) Mobile Command Post units will be available for use immediately and (5)Mobile Command Post units housed at the Guilford-Metro backup center will be retrieved by High Point 911

personnel for a total of (10) call taking positions. The (1) MCC7100 mobile radio unit High Point 911 currently owns will be available for use immediately. **Attached to this document are total startup costs, recurring costs for each component of the upgrades for the primary and backup location.