Emergency room gets high-tech makeover

With the new Cisco emergency system, staff can all hear and begin taking action without delay. Photo / Supplied

When the phone rings at Auckland Airport's operations centre, the problem being reported can be anything from a blocked toilet to a traveller needing medical attention or a full-blown aircraft emergency.

The 24-hour centre - tucked away in the airport's administration area between the international check-in counters and the runway tarmac - fields about 1000 calls a day.

When a crisis of any variety is unfolding the centre's staff have the job of co-ordinating a response from the appropriate authorities.

When a major incident happens, the room becomes an instant command post with desk space set aside for emergency services control staff.

Until recently, even when airport business was running smoothly, the operations centre was a noisy, cluttered place to work.

On each desk there would be up to three phones and several two-way radio sets - the equipment staff needed to communicate with the numerous organisations involved in running the airport including air traffic control, police, firefighters, ambulance staff, the Customs Service, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and the Aviation Security Service.

The chatter in the room from multiple radio channels made it hard to hear callers at times and was one reason the operations centre has undergone a high-tech communications overhaul, says the airport's chief information officer, Tony Wickstead.

"It was a very challenging environment for the team," he says.

To cut out the background noise in the room from up to 22 radio channels and alarms, and improve operation centre staff's ability to communicate clearly, the airport installed "intelligent" call routing technology that directs incoming calls to the most appropriate person and allows staff to juggle several calls and radio channels at once using a single headset.

The call routing system uses technology from IT company Cisco called IPICS (internet protocol interoperability and collaboration system) to solve the problem of bringing together the different communications networks used by emergency crews.

"Before, when the red phone used for aircraft emergencies rang, we had to wait until the phone was hung up to receive instructions," says Peter Stephens, business analyst for the airport's customer services team.

"Now, with Cisco IPICS, we can all hear and begin taking action without delay.

"Just one or two minutes' faster response can make a big difference in outcomes."

Wickstead says the airport is continuing to upgrade its communications technology. Last month it began using voice recognition software to handle some of the more routine calls that come into the operations centre, including inquiries from the public about flight arrival times.

Reducing the time staff spend answering routine calls has freed them up to deal with other work, he says.

Future technology plans include introducing software allowing incident reports to be sent to staff cellphones and allowing staff to monitor the status of an unfolding incident over a web browser.