Several important topics and more were discussed during the webinar, ‘Optimizing the Power of AI & FirstNet for Public Safety’, which was hosted online by the Public Safety Broadband Technology Association (PSBTA) on February 18th, 2025. Those were:
- helping 911 centers sort through non-emergency calls while leaving human telecommunicators to do more important work;
- providing on-the-spot translation services for first responders dealing with people from various cultures who don’t speak English or Spanish;
- providing supercharged processing power for police, fire, and EMS officers communicating over FirstNet, so that they can do their jobs even better than before.
Tackling these topics with clarity and insight were Michael Barnbeck, the PSBTA’s Deputy Executive Director and Stephen Devine, Chief Technology Officer of APCO International. These presenters covered how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and FirstNet are continuously changing the landscape of public safety communications by providing first responders with the tools to exponentially increase the efficiency and accuracy of mission-critical responses.
What AI Means to Public Safety
To set the context for the discussion, Barnbeck asked the singularly important question, “what does artificial intelligence mean to public safety?”
“Artificial intelligence is a behemoth that’s moving forward and going to have an impact on every element of society,” replied Devine. “Our focus is to make sure public safety gets to participate in those gains. AI is a broad field focused on creating systems that mimic human intelligence, including reasoning, decision-making, problem-solving, and interpreting information. We’re really focused on making sure that, as AI migrates forward, that public safety benefits from it.”
How AI is Being Used by Public Safety
Although AI may seem like something out of a distant science fiction future, it is already doing its part to support public safety today.
A case in point: AI-enabled telephone systems are already answering non-emergency 911 calls from the public. Before these systems existed, “if there was an accident on the highway, you would get a hundred calls from concerned citizens reporting that accident, which had an impact on the bandwidth and the availability of telecommunicators,” Devine said. Today, these AI answering systems can field those non-emergency calls, recording their contents while redirecting those callers with new and useful information to human telecommunicators whenever doing so makes sense. “The ability to do this relieves a lot of the burden on telecommunicators,” he said.
Another area where AI is helping public safety is through ‘Large Language models’. In plain language, these AI systems can translate incoming 911 calls from one language to another in real-time. Such a capability ensures that people of all cultures can get the 911 support they need during emergencies in America, saving lives and restoring public confidence in government services.
“A year and a half ago, some of the AI vendors had about 14 languages that they could support with real-time translation,” said Devine. “Today, they’re up to over 70 languages.” Better yet, these systems can be used in the field by officers dealing with non-English/non-Spanish speakers.
AI is also useful for sifting through vast amounts of information associated with crimes, and producing actionable conclusions that humans can follow through on. Basically, AI is here to do the grunt work with a level of capacity, accuracy, and speed that no human can match. (And AI doesn’t complain about hours, pay, and benefits.) “As an example, if there’s a string of robberies or burglaries in a neighborhood, AI is smart enough to know that every time that happens, there’s this car with this license plate not far away,” Devine said.
“Artificial intelligence is a behemoth that’s moving forward and going to have an impact on every element of society”
Similarly, AI-enabled systems can be used to analyze through video captured by drones in real-time. This is a major force multiplier in a wide range of situations, including searches for victims and perpetrators, and the detection of unauthorized entries and wildfires, among other things. In all of these situations, “we see the Emergency Communication Center as being the fulcrum for the management and distribution of this data,” Devine told Barnbeck. “Your drone example is a great example of being able to send something out to a smaller fire that has just started and get eyes on that, so that fire officials can take the appropriate actions to reduce and minimize the fire before it gets out of hand. That drone may be able to get there before any people can and provide commanders with the opportunity to do so.”
Meanwhile, the Nevada Department of Transportation is using AI to incorporate real-time traffic information from Waze and other sources, plus social media reports and drone video, to provide first responders with the best and fastest routes to incident scenes in a quick and useful manner. Yet again, AI is proving to be an invaluable team player for public safety in America.
AI Makes FirstNet Even Better
Even before AI began to have an impact on public safety in the United States, the nationwide public safety broadband network (NPSBN), also known as FirstNet, was supporting America’s first responders in accessing comprehensive and in-depth wireless services nationwide. Now that AI is here, these same first responders will be able to get even more performance out of FirstNet, especially since the release of the FCC 8th R&O where the Band Manager can enter into a sharing agreement with the FirstNet Authority to leverage and optimize the 4.9 GHz band.
“As the FCC has proposed, this 4.9 GHz ruling is going to provide public safety with a larger data pipe,” said Devine. “That pipe is going to be filled with the results of the AI computations and the information that AI is going to provide: Additional video, information, situational awareness, all of these things and more.”
Want More Information?
These are just some of the highlights from this PSBTA webinar. You can hear much more for free, and at any time convenient to you, by viewing a recording of the PSBTA webinar. To connect with the presenters, email webinars@thepsbta.org
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