Less than one month after GeoLynx 9-1-1 was installed in the Suisun City, California Police Department the software was truly put to the test during a 9-1-1 call where the caller did not know their location. 

The 9-1-1 caller was on a boat.  The boat was stuck in the mud and taking on water.  To make it worse one of the five occupants was having a medical emergency.  The police department used GeoLynx 9-1-1 to find the location of the boat, which instantly plotted the boat’s location in the waterway.  The United States Coast Guard and the police department’s Boating Safety Team responded using the coordinates from GeoLynx 9-1-1.  They located the boater within approximately 10 feet of the location on the map.  The occupants were safely rescued shortly after placing the 9-1-1 call. 

The Suisun City Police Department purchased GeoLynx 9-1-1 to aid them in locating wireless cell callers.  They previously relied on MapQuest to do manual lookups of the caller’s latitude and longitude and then convert it to a physical address.  This process was time consuming and could cause delays in potentially life threatening situations.  It also relied on access to the internet which may not have been available during emergency situations. 

“Locating cell phone callers is difficult enough.  When the cell phone caller is a novice boater on an unfamiliar waterway at night time with no known points of reference, you have a dangerous situation.  Using GeoLynx 9-1-1 and the integrated satellite mapping, we knew immediately where the boater was located and our emergency responders were able to respond quickly and render necessary aid,” said Sergeant Andrew White “GeoLynx 9-1-1 immediately proved its value.”

GeoLynx 9-1-1 is an emergency dispatch GIS that adds integral mapping and geographic based decision support to enhanced 9-1-1 call handling and CAD dispatch systems.  This software is a full-fledged command and control emergency dispatch geographic information center.  It automatically captures the address from the ALI stream and instantly plots an arrow at the caller’s location on the digital base map.