National Single Emergency Number

National Single Emergency Number

Apart from current political unrests and natural disasters which seemed to be increasing in terms of number of occurrences and level of severity that have brought impact upon the country’s overall population in a large scale, Thailand has also been observing the directions for the establishment national single emergency number and related operations carried out by developed countries that have been globally accepted. It can be found that countries having invested in upgrading its Emergency Call Center which only accepts emergency reports to Emergency Command Centers namely USA (911), European Union (112) and England (999) have shown a clear sign of improvement in terms of service and management efficiency.

Thailand, on the other hand, still has not set up its national single emergency number. Nevertheless, there are many relevant organizations that are responsible for handling emergency cases such as Emergency Call Center 191 under The Royal Thai Police, Emergency Medical Service Center 1669 under The National Institute for Emergency Medicine, Fire Emergency Call Center 199 under The Office of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, local administration organization and other relevant agencies. Each of these organizations is assigned with different hotline numbers which can easily cause confusion among callers when it comes to urgent cases. It is also difficult to memorize all the emergency numbers not to mention delays in terms of emergency response and the lack of integration among responsible organizations.

Hence, to ensure quick and efficient response to the dynamically changing situations, Thailand Emergency Command Center (TECC) was therefore established to implement National Single Emergency Number with the aim to allow prompt and efficient response and command among relevant organizations in case of emergency or natural disaster.

Thailand Emergency Command Center (TECC) derived from Emergency Call Center 191 under The Royal Thai Police. Its operations are similar to that of the Emergency Call Center but added with additional functions such as a system that can automatically identify the caller’s location in real-time to ensure quicker and more efficient on-site response, including database integration to allow incidents/accidents analysis and prevention and even provide assistance during investigation to help identify the cause or the person committed an offence correctly, accurately and efficiently.

Thailand Emergency Command Center consists of the following:

Voice Communication System
Automatic Call Distributor and Computer Telephony Integration System (ACD/CTI)
Multimedia Communication System
Voice Recording System
Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD
Geographic Information System (GIS)
Location Based Service (LBS)
CCTV Interface
CCTV Analytics

Since the above Emergency Command Center is still considered as a new technology in Thailand and has never been utilized before, its operations have therefore been divided into two following phases:

Phase 1 : During the initial phase, a total of 11 Emergency Command Centers shall be established as part of Regional Command Center together with relevant organizations to act as pilot project for conducting system and operational testing of the new Emergency Command Center.
Phase 2 : Once system and operational testing of the Emergency Command Center had been completed together with necessary quality improvements, the remaining 66 Emergency Command Centers and relevant organizations shall be established.

Thailand’s National Single Emergency Number System strictly follows the standard set up by National Emergency Number Association (NENA), USA. Currently, Next Generation 911, or also known as NG911, has been developed using IP network system that can support Multi-Channel Communication. Next Generation 911comprises of the following core systems:

Once the installation process has been completed, Thailand Single Emergency Call Center shall be handed over to The Royal Thai Policy by NBTC to conduct further operations.