Resgrid Blog
Resgrid.com Blog | Open Source Dispatch
Your dispatcher is juggling three phones. A storm front just rolled through, two crews are already tied up, one medic marked available by text but never updated the board, and the volunteer who can drive the heavy unit isn't answering because nobody has the right contact thread. Meanwhile, payroll is still built from handwritten shift …
At 2:13 a.m., the call volume jumps, someone is trying to update a paper contact list from memory, one supervisor is on the radio asking for unit status, and another is texting a group thread that half the team muted months ago. The incident itself may be manageable. The information flow is what starts to …
You're probably dealing with this right now. A neighborhood keeps calling about slow response times. Crews swear they're getting out the door fast. Dispatch says traffic is the problem. City leadership wants an explanation, and all anyone has are scattered incident notes, radio memories, and a few screenshots from last month. That's how agencies stay …
When a major incident hits, nobody wants to be standing in the doorway of the command post asking a basic question that should already be answered: who on this shift is fully cleared to respond? In public safety, that question isn't clerical. It's operational. If one EMT, dispatcher, rescue tech, or driver is out of …
For first responders, CAD stands for Computer-Aided Dispatch, the system used to create calls, track unit status, and manage dispatch operations across tools like SMS, WhatsApp, or Slack. In other fields, CAD can also mean Computer-Aided Design or Coronary Artery Disease, which is why dispatch teams need to be clear about the context fast. If …
The tones drop, three callers report the same highway pileup, and your dispatch floor shifts from routine to overload in seconds. One person is trying to confirm location details, another is calling mutual aid, someone else is checking unit availability, and the radio traffic starts stepping on itself. The team is experienced, but the process …
A crew is inside a concrete mid-rise. One medic is trying to push a patient update from a phone to the rest of the response chain. The app shows a spinner, then nothing. No fresh status. No confirmation. No clean retry. In public safety, that isn't a minor UX flaw. It's an operational break. That's …
At 2 AM, nobody wants to build a phone tree. A water main breaks. A substation fails. A chemical alarm trips in one building, but not the one next door. The on-call supervisor starts texting crew leads. Someone else sends an email. Dispatch tries calling contractors one by one. Ten minutes later, half the right …
If you're the person in the department who handles reports, training records, and state paperwork, you already know the problem. A crew can be sharp on the fireground and still get bogged down in the office because nobody has a clean process for certifications, annual forms, and state-required data. The work is necessary, but it …
By the time organizations start shopping for dispatch software systems, they're already paying for the old process in ways that don't show up cleanly on a budget line. A dispatcher is juggling calls, a supervisor is texting updates from the road, two units get sent to the same job, and nobody is fully sure which …