Louisville officials on Friday announced the activation of an advanced 911 profiling system first announced more than a year ago.
Through Smart911, residents can fill out profiles with personal information such as important addresses and contacts, details about pets in the home and medical information that would be valuable to first responders. When a Smart911 user makes an emergency call, the operator will immediately see that information.
Profiles and details are not available to emergency services workers unless they are responding to a 911 call.
The free Smart911 profiles will help make Louisville a safer and healthier place to live, Mayor Greg Fischer said.
"Imagine that if you've got a crisis at your house and you're calling 911 and that call-taker then sees that [profile] right away, that puts you in a much better position to get the help that it is that you need as quickly as possible," Fischer said at a news conference on Friday.
Currently, 84 percent of incoming 911 calls are from mobile devices, which offer no additional information other than the phone number and an idea of the caller's location, Emergency Services director Jody Meiman said.
He urged residents to sign up for the system, which he said could help reduce response times in emergency situations.
"It doesn't take a very long period of time but we do ask the public to be very proactive in your emergency notifications and go to sign up for that," Meiman said at the news conference.
The Smart911 rollout is the second phase of a 911 system upgrade announced in August 2016. The first part of that was Louisville Emergency Notification System (LENS) Alert, which sends alerts regarding serious events such as severe weather or chemical spills.
About 15,000 Louisville residents have signed up for that program, Metro Emergency Services spokesman Mitchell Burmeister said. As part of that signup process, many of those people created Smart 911 profiles, he said. But prior to now, those profiles were not available to call-takers in Louisville's Emergency Services operations center.
Burmeister said Metro Emergency Services can also send alerts to 260,000 publicly-listed landlines.
Both LENSAlert and Smart911 are powered by Rave Mobile Safety, and used by other cities across the country. Burmeister said technological difficulties prevented Louisville from integrating Smart 911 into its operations center before now.
To sign up for LENSAlert and Smart 911, Louisville residents can go to louisvilleky.gov and click "Sign up for emergency alerts" at the bottom of the page, or visit this link. Residents may also text LENSAlert to 67283 on their smartphone to sign up for alerts and receive a link to complete a Smart911 profile.
This post has been updated.
