Baltimore features a diverse year-round calendar of sporting, artistic and cultural events. While these gatherings drive vital tourism and economic growth, managing the resulting large crowds and heightened security risks presents significant public safety challenges.
To mark America’s semiquincentennial, a fleet of international tall ships sailed through five major coastal cities - New Orleans, Norfolk, Baltimore, New York and Boston – in a celebration of global naval and aviation history. The city of Baltimore also hosted multiple family-friendly activities to coincide with the event, from crab soup cook-offs to open-air movie screenings and even a special appearance from the U.S. Navy Blue Angels flight demonstration team.
While the weekend was an exciting opportunity for the public to tour historic ships and learn more about maritime and military heritage, it was also a challenge for Baltimore’s emergency management team. With three separate event locations – Inner Harbor, Fells Point and Baltimore Peninsula – and an estimated 200,000 attendees, the city’s public safety agencies had to think outside the box to keep both residents and visitors safe.
In particular, Tenea Reddick, 9-1-1 director for the city, was aware of the added burden this could put on her team. Her call handlers already deal with two million calls annually (both emergency and non-emergency), which amounts to over 5,000 calls per day. In her words, “We were expecting thousands of additional people in the city. I was asking myself, how can I keep these people safe? How can I see what events happened and what kind of assistance the public needed?”
Tenea and her team decided to implement policy-based routing, available as part of the Motorola Solutions call routing service, so regular 9-1-1 calls could still be handled in a timely manner, while incidents specific to SAIL250® would be directed to a dedicated call queue. Sam Bard, director of NGCS product management at Motorola Solutions, describes policy-based routing as follows: “It all comes down to an input value, a condition and an action. So for example, an input value is a predefined polygon, the condition is where a call is coming from and the action is that all calls from within that polygon should be routed to a specific call queue.”
Tenea adds, “I only wanted certain call handlers to take calls from the event, so if any incident were to happen in the city I would still have other call handlers available.” The team worked with Motorola Solutions to set up three distinct zones, one for each of the areas where events were taking place, and configured separate call queues accordingly. Tenea also assigned separate incident commanders and dispatchers to the areas, to complete the operational picture.
After extensive testing, the policies went live at 8 a.m. on the first day of the SAIL250® event and worked exactly as expected. Reflecting on the event, Tenea says, “The information flowed seamlessly; there were no interruptions and no hiccups. When we think about 9-1-1, time is of the essence, and this routing really worked. I hope it makes the public feel a little more safe and secure, knowing there are dedicated call handlers ready to jump in and help during a big incident.”