Los Angeles Fire Department deploys vehicle locator

The Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) recently purchased HP workstations and performance displays for its emergency dispatch center, which helps protect more than 4 million citizens in America's second-largest city. The workstations let the LAFD run bandwidth-intensive applications simultaneously, including a real-time mapping application that tracks all deployed resources, said Dennis Bloemhof, director of systems at LAFD.

The department's latest PC installation includes units from HP's Z Workstation series, which have built-in Intel Xeon processors for communications between the dispatch center and the emergency responders while they're out in the field, according to a company spokesperson. Vital information such as location, type of emergency and pre-arrival instruction, is delivered directly to first-responder vehicles via workstations at the dispatch center.

Now, with the support of the new services, the department will roll out an expansion of its existing automatic vehicle location system. The first step — installing GPS-enabled Panasonic Toughbooks on 600 rigs — is complete. Bloemhof said in the next phase of the project, the information will be transmitted wirelessly from the computers into department's computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system so uniformed fire-department dispatchers and captains can see units' location.

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