Resgrid Blog
Resgrid.com Blog | Open Source Dispatch
You're probably dealing with one of two situations right now. Your current dispatch system still works, but crews complain about slow screens, awkward unit updates, and too many workarounds. Or you're shopping for a replacement and every vendor demo looks polished until you start asking the questions that matter, like what happens when the internet …
At 2:13 a.m., the CAD screen locks up right as a weather event starts pulling in mutual aid traffic. One dispatcher is writing details on paper. Another is trying to re-enter unit status from memory. Supervisors are on the phone with neighboring agencies because the old interface won't reliably pass updates. That's the moment many …
A lot of agencies are in the same bad spot right now. Dispatch needs to move patient details fast. Crews are spread across personal phones, shared tablets, radios, and station computers. Someone ends up sending a name, age, complaint, or scene photo through ordinary text because it's easy and everyone already has it. That shortcut …
You're usually not shopping for real time GPS tracking because the map looks interesting. You're shopping because something is already breaking. Drivers are calling in late. A supervisor can't tell which crew is closest. A vehicle moved after hours and no one knows whether it was authorized. A responder entered a structure and suddenly the …
At 02:00, the board still looks clean, but the scene doesn't. Crews are spread across a structure, a parking lot, and a side entrance nobody mentioned on the first radio report. One medic team is moving. A volunteer just arrived and hasn't checked in with staging. Dispatch is asking who's available, and the answer depends …
At 2 a.m., nobody cares how polished a product demo looked. They care whether the right unit got the call, whether the address was correct, whether anyone can see who's available, and whether the person on scene has enough information to make a good decision fast. That's where most public safety operations still break down. …
If you're evaluating a push to talk button right now, you're probably not choosing between a neat gadget and another neat gadget. You're trying to stop missed updates, reduce radio clutter, and avoid paying twice for communication tools that don't work together. That decision usually shows up in one of two places. A dispatch team …
If you're running dispatch, command, or multi-agency coordination today, you already know the feeling of operating half-blind. Units are en route, radio traffic is stacked, one agency is looking at CAD, another is looking at text threads, and somebody is still asking for the latest staging location because the answer changed three minutes ago. That …
A dispatcher takes the call correctly, but the address field carries over from the previous incident. The wrong unit starts moving. Someone catches it, but not before radios light up, crews get distracted, and the caller hears delay instead of confidence. Nobody planned that failure. It came from a process gap that had probably shown …
If you're responsible for dispatch, field coordination, or emergency operations, you probably already know the weak point in most continuity planning. The radios may work, the CAD may have a backup, and the file server may replicate somewhere else. Then a real disruption hits and the breakdown starts somewhere else entirely. No one knows which …