The following is a brief comparison of the two systems that are being considered by the board of supervisors as the CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) system for the new Communications Center (dispatch) for the city of Carson.
HTE is an AS400 system which means it is a command line driven package and is similar to a DOS system. Tiburon is a UNIX based system and the system of choice by the majority of the evaluating committee. This is very similar to a Windows operating system.
This translates into a major difference in the way the systems operate. A DOS-based system will allow the operator to view one screen at a time as was demonstrated by HTE representatives. The problem this presents in dispatch is the operator can only see one piece of vital information at a time. This is the equivalent of an air traffic controller who is responsible for several planes but is only able to view the location of one plane at a time.
An example of how this applies in public safety is the deployment of fire department personnel to a blaze in a commercial structure. The system may alert the dispatcher of a hazard at that location. The dispatcher attempts to reveal the nature of the hazard. The operator must go through several screens before seeing the nature of hazard.
Radio traffic received from field units such as a piece of fire apparatus arriving on scene must be entered into the traffic. This takes the dispatcher back to the "primary" dispatch screen and the process must be started over again. Because there are several pieces of fire equipment dispatched on an incident of this sort, there is a lot of radio traffic that must be logged by the dispatcher. In this situation, the firefighters can very well end up on the scene of the incident and inside the structure on initial attack and the dispatcher has not been able to alert them of a potentially life-threatening chemical or explosive inside structure.
I hope you can see the importance of having a modern system in the dispatch center and will support the committee' decision to purchase the Tiburon CAD System.
