Using the APCO Standard
HOW WE CHOSE TO USE THIS EXISTING STANDARD
Most 911 jurisdictions use their own, unique labels to categorize incidents. Some systems may start categorizing incidents with an existing standard, but they almost always make additional adjustments and customizations. Many create entirely unique labeling systems.
About the APCO Standard
We choose to use the 2019 APCO "Public Safety Communications Common Incident Types for Data Exchange" standard for the Reimagine 911 project. This standard was developed to support the interoperability between systems are consistent and efficient for the seamless management of calls for service in preparation for Next Generation 9-1-1 implementation.
From the ANS executive summary:
This ANS was originally developed and revised by a team of emergency communication professionals from around the country and provides the best representation of the many classification of incidents reported to public safety agencies. After an industry wide survey and review by the standards working group, the incident type codes listed below provide a baseline for seamless transfer of information between disparate systems and agencies.
How we applied the APCO standard
We used the APCO standard codes to associate local call types from one city with local call types with another. The Reimagine 911 project performed this associative work using volunteers and a purpose-built software platform (see Call Type Standardization). For example, the local call types for the cities below are all connected through the APCO code for "Citizen Assistance".
With local call types normalized this way, it becomes possible to search for trends across local datasets.
Why we choose to use this standard
After discussions with many 911 researchers and practitioners, we decided to use APCO standard as a set of common codes that we would associate with local call types. There were several reasons for this decision:
Established Authority. The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) is the world’s oldest and largest organization of public safety communications professionals. As an American National Standards Institute (ANSI)-accredited Standards Developer (ASD), APCO International has an established role in the development of standards that affect the emergency services industry.
Existing Standard. A recurring preference in the Reimagine 911 interviews was a desire for converging on a single standard. Though we did consider using our own common codes, or using a customized super-set of this APCO set, we did not wish to contribute to the issue of non-standardization by introducing another divergent standard.
Few Alternatives. There are some shortcomings with this standard (mentioned below), but there are very few alternatives available originating within the US.
Challenges of using this standard
We used the APCO standard as a good starting place to start classifying 911 incidents. We chose to further refine the standard and develop our own taxonomy with the APCO standard as its foundation because of these challenges with the APCO standard:
Vague Descriptions. For many APCO codes the descriptions are vague or missing entirely. This sometimes makes it difficult to confidently use the code. We did not attempt to interpret or annotate the APCO codes; instead we took steps to record uncertainty when it surfaced.
Lack of Categorization. The APCO standard includes codes that clearly have a hierarchical relationship (for example ALARM and RESIDENTIAL ALARM). If the relationships were made explicit by the standard it would reduce uncertainty where descriptions are vague or missing. It would also be immediately useful for analysis and reporting. We did create two taxonomies of our own for these purposes (see Our Taxonomies).
Inconsistent Code Selection. Upon reviewing the APCO codes in detail, no consistent patterns surfaced that explained how codes were selected or omitted. For example, 10 codes prefixed with "NCR" appear to be specific to the Nation Capitol Region surrounding Washington DC. However no other sets of codes represented specific geographic regions or particular multi-agency coordination behaviors. Since these 10 codes do not appear exhaustive, it is unclear why they were selected to be included in the standard.
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