New Orleans has become the first major U.S. City to deploy and begin testing a new Israeli-developed AI system to route low-priority 911 calls to robots and more severe emergency calls to human dispatchers.
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As 911 centers continue facing surges in calls and shortages in employees — due to fiscal and practical constraints — agencies across the country are turning to Artificial Intelligence (AI) to field calls.
The Orleans Parish Communication District (OPCD) in Louisiana is one of the most recent districts in the U.S. to adopt the new technology. In 2022, OPCD first started working with Carbyne Ltd. — an Israeli-based emergency communications technology company. While the company has headquarters in New York City, New York, its research and development operations take place in Tel-Aviv, Israel.
The work resulted in the development of an operator powered by AI. It can analyze, sort, and prioritize emergency calls and route them to either AI bots or human dispatchers. It’s called, AI Emergency Call Triage. For two years, OPCD has been testing the AI system. It is mainly used for motor vehicle accidents — especially during the morning and afternoon rush hours.
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New Orleans Deploys Israel-Developed AI Tool To Sort And Prioritize 911 Calls
In New Orleans, more than 12,000 of car accidents are reported every year. Karl Fasold, Executive Director of the Orleans Parish Communication District, told WVUE more about the AI tool. He said it is only used when all human 911 operators are busy with other callers. It also deployed when the incoming 911 call comes from within a 200-meter radius of a previously reported car crash.
According to Fasold, the AI call triage has not and will not be used for other, more severe emergency calls. He insisted that there are measures in place to ensure crisis 911 calls are routed to a human operator. He said:
”We listened to 100 percent of the calls for the first three months. We had no false positives, [and] we had no false negatives, meaning the AI handled the calls it should’ve handled and didn’t try to handle any it shouldn’t have tried to handle.”
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Karl Fasold also told WVUE:
“If somebody calls about a relative having a heart attack, when that call is coming in, we don’t know what it is. Calls get answered in the order that they’re received. If someone is available, the call goes to them. If no one is available, you go to queue. You get frustrated because you’re in a queue waiting, and you want to talk to somebody, and it results in my personnel handling calls back-to-back-to-back. So, there’s increased stress levels on both sides.”
According to Carbyne’s website, Karl Fasold also said:
“With 18 million visitors to New Orleans annually, we handle over 1 million calls a year, despite acute staffing challenges. Carbyne’s AI-V Emergency Call Triage is exactly the kind of technology OPCD needs to help us handle surge periods so we can provide the level of service our community deserves, and get the right people, to the right place, at the right time; better than anyone else in the world.”
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