Positron | Positron gives SOS Navarra, The Power to Respond™

Positron gives SOS Navarra, The Power to Respond™
Montreal, Quebec, October 26, 2005

In north central Spain, the State of Navarra borders both the westernmost edge of the Pyrenees Mountains and southwestern France. It is an area with a long history and made famous by Pamplona and the yearly Running of the Bulls.

SOS Navarra, run and administered by the Government of Navarra, provides all of Navarra's 1-1-2 services (Europe's equivalent of 9-1-1 in the United States). It is one of the most advanced in Europe, having started providing service to the public in 1986. When SOS Navarra decided to upgrade to a new 1-1-2 platform, they knew they needed a solution which would meet their needs today but also be open and flexible for the future of their organization. Positron answered SOS Navarra's call by creating a customized and open platform using the most advanced emergency-response tools available.

European PSAPs differ from their American counterparts in that there are few standards enforced by the European Union or member countries. In fact, 1-1-2, using a centrally-coordinated service center, was first required by the European Union only in 1991. Today Europe's civil protection organizations and emergency response units are extremely diverse, mirroring the same diversity of languages and cultures found throughout Europe.

This broad collection of organizations usually means that the 1-1-2 PSAP will require a complex integration plan to get its services to interface with each member state and the various local authorities in a service area. Positron worked with local integration partner Tracasa SA (a company owned by the State of Navarra) to integrate specific workflow and technology into their market-leading Power 911, Power CAD and Power MAP solutions. This flexibility has translated into rapid and efficient integration of Positron and Tracasa technology to provide the SOS Navarra PSAP with:

A medical staff / local health center scheduling tool to assure proper dispatching;
Extremely fast report generation with graphical AVL summary maps;
Rules-based incident positioning;
Expert system monitoring which sends GSM short messages (SMS) with system maintenance tasks to technical staff;
Status changes using a TETRA radio network; and
Highly customized and automated incident / response information card workflows.

SOS Navarra is also looking to the future. They will be implementing automatic systems for assisting abused spouses and tracking abusers, in-vehicle car-alarm devices and home-based alert buttons for senior citizens. Positron's open platforms are playing a critical role in the development of these systems. "Positron's engineers really understand best practices for change management. Positron's open approach has allowed us to integrate several new critical services in a short amount of time," says Mans Shapshak, IT Service Level Manager for SOS Navarra.

Another benefit of the open solution has been the ease of monitoring Positron's systems using Tracasa's monitoring suite. "We monitor around 500 different components. In addition to Positron's servers, it is critical to monitor other providers' systems. For example, we also monitor both location and communications systems. Positron's software provides highly detailed monitoring of events which assures that all Positron services are running perfectly," explains Mr. Shapshak.

In talking about how well the international team works together, Mr. Shapshak explains, "We hold monthly meetings with users who want to request new features. In those meetings, Positron and Tracasa engineers are always coming up with leading-edge ideas and working together as a team in what is one of the best provider-customer relationships I have ever experienced. Positron has been extremely flexible in adapting to our users' needs and work style to make sure that new features meet users' needs in the least amount of time possible."

Positron is proud to have SOS Navarra as a member of the family.