Fire Departments & Authorities

How Does OPEN ACCESS™ Work?

As opposed to traditional fire alarm monitoring, in which, when a fire alarm signal is generated at a building it is sent to a Underwriters Laboratories listed Monitoring Centre.  Upon receipt, the Monitoring Centre Operator will notify the fire department without verification.

OPEN ACCESS™ is a high-speed gateway that allows for the direct and immediate alarm delivery from third party Underwriters Laboratories listed Monitoring Centres to emergency response dispatch centres.  This technology has been independently proven to save an average of 114.7 seconds on emergency response times thus reducing potential property damage and loss of life.

OPEN ACCESS™ & Fire Departments

We know that Fire Departments are always striving to reduce their response times, and technologies like OPEN ACCESS™ can play an important role in improving a Fire Department’s ability to arrive on scene quickly by reducing dispatch time and the possibility of human error.

Dispatch Time

The use of OPEN ACCESS™ technology can greatly reduce a Fire Department’s dispatch time.  This revolutionary technology re-transmits alarms from third-party Underwriters Laboratories listed Monitoring Centres to the appropriate Fire Department Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system.  This has resulted in a reduction of 2 minutes on average simply through the use of OPEN ACCESS™.

By delivering pre-verified data to the Fire Department’s CAD system, OPEN ACCESS™ not only eliminates address and information intake, it also reduces the potential for human error in the dispatching process.

OPEN ACCESS™ can partner with any Fire Deparment using a variety of automation platforms, including (but not limited to):

• Symposium
• Crisys
• Hexagon

CAD Specs Interface

OPEN ACCESS™ – Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) Interface Specifications

• Basic Interface Specifications
• XML Interface Communications Specification
• Does not require new alarm equipment
• Does not affect the monitoring standards of UL, NFPA, FM, or ULC
• Is an open, low cost, network protocol
• Allowing fire alarms from UL/ULC alarm stations to go directly to a fire department’s CAD dispatch system