RapidSOS and Emergency24 announced a partnership that aims to deliver alarm signals for commercial fires faster and with more accurate data into the hands of first responders. With the launch of digital alerts, emergency communication centers (ECCs) nationwide will receive dispatch information from monitoring centers in real-time, eliminating the need for a phone call.

“The overall goal was to accelerate and to enhance that communication between the central station and the emergency call centers regarding fire and life safety,” said Steve Mayer, vice president operations and administration, Emergency24. “It leverages three components. First is the existing relationship between the central station and the alarm installer and the panel sending us the signals. The second piece is the Honeywell connected life safety services (CLSS). And the third piece — that last digital mile if you will — is the RapidSOS paired with our own automation.”

According to the U.S. Fire Administration, non-residential fires increased 20 percent with fatalities up 70 percent in the study period (2011-2021). “This is a way that we can now get first responders that information faster and it will dramatically improve, and hopefully reduce those fatalities,” Mayer said. “We won't be able to prevent the fires, but we can respond better and faster to them.”

With RapidSOS, alarm signal data can be shared from the fire panel communicator, assessed by a central station, and received by ECCs and field responders all digitally, eliminating manual handoffs, transcription errors and reducing transmission time.

“They are now sending that information directly to first responders,” Mayer said. “Whether they’re a volunteer firefighter, or a municipal firefighter who’s on the payroll, they are able to get that information. Battalion chiefs are getting that information and now they can respond faster and with the same level of information that was taking probably minutes. Now, we’re talking about a dramatically reduced timeframe.”

Central stations play a critical role in commercial fire emergencies by assessing and verifying the accuracy of the signal data received from the building’s fire panels. With digital alerting through RapidSOS, UL-certified central stations can seamlessly share data with ECCs and field responders without the need for a phone call or manual input. Honeywell’s CS Premium compresses a 2.5-minute dispatch call into a mere 13 seconds. This not only establishes a new industry benchmark but also presents significant potential for revolutionizing emergency response.

“On the next wave of this technology, we’re going to be able to pass on additional information, whether it be passing on a floor plan or locations where the panel or the Knox box is — which has special keys for firefighters to access the building — or where we can pass on video of what's going on,” Mayer said.

One key benefit for first responders — speed to dispatch. The Emergency24 integration delivers critical data, including the type of hazard, severity and location within the impacted building, directly into the hands of telecommunicators and field responders. Combined with the RapidSOS capability to triage incidents by the criticality of a situation, emergencies that include commercial fire signals will be addressed faster. Emergency24 led on integrating commercial fire data directly into its monitoring centers and digitally sharing it with first responders, in an effort to more efficiently deliver data in an incident.

“Supporting speed and accuracy of fire response is important at Honeywell, and we are happy to work alongside RapidSOS, who is improving not only the speed of delivery of emergency incident data but also the quality of information,” said Sameer Agarwal, vice president and general manager, Commercial Fire Americas, Honeywell Building Technologies, an investor in RapidSOS. “The technology integrations between RapidSOS and its partners will help further modernize and digitize the public safety communications infrastructure.”