As 911 centers turn to AI, agencies weigh gains against risks - katu.com

As 911 centers turn to AI, agencies weigh gains against risks

PENOBSCOT COUNTY, Maine (SOA) -- For Maine’s 911 dispatch centers, the calls do not stop, and neither does the pressure on already short-staffed teams to quickly sort emergencies from less urgent calls.

Now, some agencies are turning to artificial intelligence to help manage the workload, though few are willing to let it play a role in the most critical calls.

Penobscot County’s Regional Communications Center has led Maine in call volume for six straight years, even as it has gone without a full staff for a portion of that time.

The center handles more than 60,000 911 calls annually, Director Brad Fitzgerald told Spotlight on America, in addition to more than 400,000 calls to its non-emergency lines.

“They were working long hours, and the call volume every year has continued to rise and rise,” Fitzgerald said. “It can be such a quick, fast workload, and it could be an extended workload that puts a lot of stress and strain on our staff.”

The staffing shortage extends beyond Penobscot County. A 2024 study from the Maine Public Utilities Commission found only six of Maine’s 22 dispatch centers were fully staffed at the time. The study called the shortage “critical” in parts of the state and a concern “in both the short and long term.”

Against that backdrop, the Penobscot County center began looking in 2023 for ways to ease pressure on its staff without changing how it handles emergencies or responds to the public.

“We still have to treat every call as if it could be an emergency,” Fitzgerald said. “If someone calls, regardless of what they call about, we’re still going to do what we can to help them because obviously they called for a reason.”

The solution was an artificial intelligence-powered system for the center’s non-emergency line.

It is not used to answer any 911 calls. Instead, the Amazon Web Services system gives non-emergency callers options for issues that do not require an immediate response.

It can still connect them to a dispatcher, or text a link to their phone to file a report online.

“I call it a phone tree to give people some options and some prompts,” Fitzgerald said. “There were some agencies that obviously were doing a lot with it, but it was very customizable, and that’s what really caught our attention.”

He said the technology has helped keep dispatchers available for emergency calls.

Reporter Dan Lampariello: “Do you believe if you didn’t have this AWS service, you’d see more of these non-emergency calls coming through?”

Fitzgerald: “Yeah. Absolutely. Would I say it’s an astronomical number that it has taken away? No, it hasn’t, but it has taken away a percentage. I think even a small percentage is still helping the burden on our staff.”

Across the country, dispatch centers are finding different uses for AI. Some are using it to help sort and triage non-emergency calls.

Others are using it to call back people who hang up, spot clusters of calls during a crisis, or translate and transcribe conversations.

As more agencies look at those possibilities, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration has been working to help 911 leaders understand where the technology may help — and where it could fall short.

Jeremy Hill, a public safety adviser with the agency, said interest has changed quickly over the past year and a half.

“It’s gone from a resistance to a curiosity to now, I would even say, a hunger,” Hill said.

A 2025 NTIA white paper found some early adopters are already reporting measurable results.

At Jeffcom 911, the agency said AI helped produce a sustained 33% reduction in administrative calls and improve the share of 911 calls answered within 15 seconds by at least 5%.

The paper also cited the Monterey County Emergency Communications District, where AI reduced non-emergency call volume by about 36% on average, allowing dispatchers to focus on higher-priority calls.

But the NTIA paper also warns that wider adoption will require more than interest from local agencies. It calls for voluntary national standards on transparency, cybersecurity and human oversight, including benchmarks for how well AI systems must perform and when calls should be routed to a person.

The report also cites cost, outdated procurement rules and a lack of common standards as barriers that could leave smaller or under-resourced 911 centers behind.

Hill said no technology, or person, will be perfect. That is why quality assurance and safeguards remain essential.

And he does not see AI replacing dispatchers.

“I do believe the technology could be there, but I don’t see us ever getting away from a human in the loop,” Hill said. “There’s still that human compassion, that empathy that really drives home the mission of what we do in public safety.”

Fitzgerald agreed. Penobscot County’s system offers additional features, but he said the center will wait to see how the technology develops.

“Having a human to deal with those things is the safest option,” Fitzgerald said. “We’re waiting to see how the technology evolves, and that will obviously dictate how we evolve with this.”