Porter County 911 Moving To A New State Of The Art Dispatch Center

Over the next 30 days, Porter County Central Communications (911) will be transitioning their department from their current location at the Porter County Sheriff’s building to a new state of the art dispatch center located at 157 Franklin Street in downtown Valparaiso. During this period, we will be testing and retesting equipment at the new location, making sure that the numerous and necessary redundancies are in place. When all testing is completed, we will split the dispatching staff and run operations out of both centers for a period of time to assure that no calls are missed.

Here is more information about the improvements and investments Porter County Government has made to serve our first responders and citizens. All of this was achieved while keeping your county property tax rate flat!

Basic Facts

• 911 Primary Answering point for all calls in Porter County
• Dispatches all Porter County Fire/EMS/Rescue, and eight of the ten Police agencies

New Systems

These new systems were purchased by Porter County government to improve the current 911 technologies and provided better services to the residents and first responders:

• Radio- Motorola 7500 p-25 Digital system – Provides better coverage for all field units improving better interoperability between all agencies
• 911 Phones – Motorola CallWorks system that can be integrated with Radio and Computer Aided Dispatch System
• Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD)-Migrating to Premier One by the end of 2021

Benefits of New Center

• Centrally located within Porter County which will allow for better access of Porter County police and fire departments to Porter County Central Communications.
• Strong building structure that can withstand high winds and severe weather.
• Building layout allows for Dispatch to have a dedicated area separate from Administration.
• New state of the art HVAC system to provide exact cooling and heating needed for servers and 911 technologies.
• Ten dispatch positions from Xybix Furniture which are ergonomic for the dispatcher and have been proven to improve dispatcher efficiency.
• New dispatch positions also have a dedicated cable management system that improves upon the older out-of-warranty positions.
• Dedicated Fiber line for improved reliability and increased data capacity. This allows for needed for newer technologies and future developments for Porter County.
• New IT server room allows for a better managed cabling system.
• Newer technologies utilized through fiber and Ethernet will allow Porter County to discontinue additional costs of older circuits and copper lines.
• Capability to add advanced technologies to the new center such as access to current video feeds throughout Porter County.
• Training room for 911, to be used for hosting local and regional training to improve services.
• Purchase of the Premier One Computer Aided Dispatch system was required as the current. Tiburon Computer Aided Dispatch is at its “End of Life” and no longer supported by the vendor.
• New systems are Next Generation 911 compliant. Integrating all systems and connectivity through Porter County’s purchases of these systems will allow dispatchers to provide better. services to the public and responders. Each system will provide advanced capabilities that were previously unavailable in prior systems.

For more information, please visit https://www.porterco.org/Blog.aspx?IID=6