Cuyahoga County: Public Safety Answering Point ... - Cleveland.com

Cuyahoga County: PSAP Assessment
3. Data Collection
In an effort to obtain accurate information as well as encourage participation,
multiple communications were sent to the various Police Chiefs, PSAP Managers
and Mayors of the 47 communities that house the PSAPs. Each entity received a
minimum of three pieces of correspondence in the form of hard-copy letters in
addition to two mass mailed emails. Samples of the correspondence sent to
PSAPs can be found in the appendices of this document.
In addition, round-table sessions were held with over 73 percent of PSAPs
throughout the County. Twelve individual round-table discussions were held at
convenient days of the week and times of the day at multiple Cuyahoga County
Library branches.
Time Motion studies were also performed with a representative sample of PSAPs
in the County. The Time Motion studies consisted of six separate sessions for a
total of at least 18 hours of observation in three separate PSAPs across the
region. Additionally, separate meetings, data collection and discussions were
held with several technology vendors supporting Cuyahoga County’s current 9-1-
1 infrastructure.
Throughout the project an additional 40 hours’ worth of discussion and analysis
was conducted around the various groups that have shown sincere interest in
Regional PSAP Consolidation in the form of site visits, tours of Public Safety
Central, Stark County Dispatch Operations, and Lake County Dispatch
Operations.
3.1 Data Limitations
As with any study, the results are only as robust as the participation and
feedback received. The very nature of requesting information from 47 different
PSAPs has an inherent issue of responsiveness, and there are data limitations to
this study. Fortunately, PSAP consolidation is a popular trend throughout the
country; therefore, there are many proven results and measurable statistics that
are well documented. In this study, the following data limitations were
identified:
The majority of PSAPs returned some information and many went above
and beyond; however, it was clear early in the study that some PSAPs
would offer little to no feedback. Numerous attempts were made to
gather the data from the necessary PSAPs, and for those that offered little
to no data, estimates were calculated based on similar PSAPs in the
region.
The scope of this assessment was limited to a current state analysis of
PSAP size, CAD technology, operating budget, dispatch personnel and call
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