An Emergency Centre Dispatcher Task Analysis.

In the context of a research project regarding the Next Generation 911 (NG911) emergency call network, we studied the operations of an emergency call centre through a task analysis. While much research on emergency response focuses on dealing with sizeable incidents, such as natural disasters, our study specifically looked at the daily operations of the call centre. To understand the tasks of the dispatchers, we analyzed their training materials and conducted interviews. Dispatchers are responsible for receiving information from the call takers and then entering additional details to assist the first responders. In this article, we also discuss some of the challenges faced by the dispatchers as well as some potential solutions. This analysis complements our previous work detailing the emergency call centre’s call takers’ tasks [ 19 ].