Multi-agency incident sharing without forcing a single CAD vendor
Each agency has a contract with a different CAD vendor. Consolidating them into one is politically impossible on any short horizon. So we didn't try.
The real constraint
Police, fire, EMS — each with its own CAD contract, vendor, renewal cycle. The operational requirement: an incident reaches all relevant agencies simultaneously and precisely. The political requirement: nobody drops their vendor.
The canonical incident model
EDXL-DE (OASIS) for transport — the international standard for distributing emergency data. NIEM for common data classes. One canonical model; every CAD vendor maps into and out of it. The N×M problem becomes N.
Per-vendor translations
One translation per vendor — vendor A ↔ canonical, vendor B ↔ canonical. When agency X changes CAD vendor, one translation is touched, not every integration. Upgrades become operational, not project work.
Geospatial aggregation
Feeds from multiple GIS (cadastre, utilities, closed streets, gas infrastructure) unified under one operational layer. The dispatcher sees one map with all relevant layers for the incident, not five separate windows.
Radio and PTT bridge
A "unit on scene" event coming off the radio propagates automatically to the CAD systems of all involved agencies. Radio stays radio; data travels on top.
Audit and retention
Every message has a correlation ID, a signed timestamp and an auditable chain for two years. When someone asks "exactly when did EMS learn about this?", there is a verifiable answer — not institutional memory.