This award will support a partnership among the University of California San Diego, the State of California Governor's Office of Emergency Services (OES), and the Public Safety Network (PSN) company. The goal is to perform spatiotemporal analysis of 9-1-1 call stream data and correlate these data to external events, in order to provide more effective and efficient response during emergencies. A wide variety of existing and emerging data sources are of potential value in helping the OES determine the location and magnitude of incipient disasters, and timely access to these data is critical for OES to manage State-level resources and to assist local governments in providing aid to disaster victims. PSN has been contracted by California to collect 9-1-1 call stream data across the State. PSN collects data from several hundred distinct Public Safety Answering Points (PSAP's) for about 60-80,000 emergency calls per day. Researchers from UC San Diego's San Diego Supercomputer Center and Scripps Institution of Oceanography will work with PSN and OES to provide expertise in advanced data management, data analysis, data mining, and statistical techniques, with the objective of performing spatiotemporal analysis of 9-1-1 emergency call stream data across the State of California and correlating these data with external information, such as earthquakes and fires.
PSN will provide an archival dataset of 9-1-1 call stream data for the 4-year period preceding the start of the project. The analysis will include correlation of this information with external event information, such as earthquakes and wildfires, to determine spatiotemporal signature of such events. This information will then be used to establish alarm thresholds to provide advance warning to first responders and other emergency service personnel, concerning the spatial extent and temporal evolution of an emergency event. The long-term goal is also to enable the use of this information for real-time detection of emergency events in order to provide rapid response at the local level and facilitate decision support for resource allocation and planning at the State level.
Intellectual Merit - Analysis of 9-1-1 call stream data will provide a better understanding of the spatiotemporal patterns of emergency calls and their correlation to external events. Predictive models built with this data can lead to real-time decision support and better overall planning to enable more efficient and effective response to emergencies. While 9-1-1 data is currently being collected across the nation, it is being used primarily for administrative purposes, not for real-time assessment and prediction of emergency response situations. This project will provide that linkage between the data and the spatiotemporal analysis techniques required to mine the data and develop predictive models.
Impact - The project will involve first responders and emergency services personnel from State and local agencies, as well as representative personnel from border law enforcement information agencies, e.g. the Automated Regional Justice Information Systems (ARJIS), San Diego. Although the focus of this project is on California, PSN also has access to 9-1-1 call stream data across much of the U.S. Indeed, the methodologies developed in this research will be applicable immediately to other states and regions.
