Police glimpse future

Tasmania to lead nation with new dispatching system

POLICE Minister Rene Hidding and Police Commissioner Darren Hine have held a combined news conference heralding a $15.3 million computeraided dispatch system.

They say the system, called ESCAD, will change the face of emergency response and be used by all three emergency response providers in the state.

Mr Hidding said the new management tool, which places Tasmania “at the forefront of the nation” in emergency response, replaces a 28-year-old radio room system that is so dated that there is only one person left in Tasmania who knows how to repair it.

“We have reached single-expert dependency,’’ he said. “That’s a scary situation. If that one single person is not in the state and it went down Tas Police would lose its ability to launch a response to an emergency — they would be doing it by telephone, which takes policing back 20 to 30 years.”

ESCAD — the Emergency Services Computer Aided Dispatch system — will be used by Police, Ambulance and the Tasmanian Fire Service, with SES capability as well.

Each service will maintain its own radio room but all will share the information available on ESCAD, said Commissioner Hine. “A common operating platform is the best, up-to-date technology to go towards,” he said.

The three emergency services currently use three different systems that don’t communicate with each other. A single integrated system was a key rec- ommendation of the 2013 Tasmanian Bushfires Inquiry and the Victorian Bushfires Inquiry

“ESCAD will enable our emergency services’ communications centres to better communicate with each other to improve the management of incidents requiring a multiagency response,’’ Mr Hidding said.

The system will record details such as what happened, location and time, who’s attending, and comments about the incident.

Commissioner Hine said the tender and evaluation process and installation of the ESCAD system is expected to take up to two years.