North Dakota is one of the most sparsely populated U.S. states, with just under 800,000 residents spread across a little more than 70,000 square miles (approximately 181,300 km2 ). Its lands are mostly rural, boasting large farms and ranches, but it’s also home to the rugged Badlands. Seated in the northern Great Plains, just south of Canada, North Dakota is also known for its harsh winter weather.
Headquartered in the state capital of Bismarck is North Dakota’s Division of State Radio, which coordinates 911 services for more than 300 local and tribal agencies in 26 of the state’s 53 counties, as well as two state agencies: North Dakota State Highway Patrol and North Dakota Game and Fish. It fields more than 280,000 calls each year from its 24/7 communications center. A longtime Octave customer that used Octave I/CAD (formerly Intergraph Computer-Aided Dispatch) for years, the department needed a next-generation CAD solution to manage the size and scope of its operations.
We’re having positive experiences with it. It just makes things much more efficient and quicker for our dispatchers.
We’re having positive experiences with it. It just makes things much more efficient and quicker for our dispatchers.
North Dakota State Radio relied on and was happy with Octave’s workhorse I/CAD solution, but it needed a more modern system to provide improved situational awareness and better coordinate dispatching statewide. Recently, North Dakota State Radio migrated to OnCall Dispatch, an integral part of Octave’s public safety platform.
Its implementation of OnCall Dispatch allows the agency to coordinate across county and jurisdictional lines, including volunteer organizations in more rural areas. The technology not only improves coordination and response times in emergency situations, but also provides a seamless communication system, mapping, resource management tools and real-time situational awareness for the statewide network of emergency response agencies. The migration has improved dispatch and emergency response coordination for events of all sizes, according to the department, which said it allows them to understand the size and scope of events and keep information clean – especially helpful in a sometimes unforgiving climate.