Many industries today rely heavily on incident monitoring systems to ensure safety, efficiency, and productivity. Whether it’s from CCTV monitoring, sensor data or lone worker solutions, control rooms receive a large volume of alarms signals from a range of security systems and sensors. 

This increasing complexity and volume of data means that operators face challenges in effectively managing and responding to alarms. This is where having the right alarm monitoring software comes in, giving operators the tools to bring a potentially chaotic environment under control.

This article will explore how software makes life easier for operators in an Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC), enabling them to quickly filter through alerts and respond to high priority incidents immediately.

Streamlining Alarm Management

The traditional approach to monitoring meant that central station operators were flooded with alerts all the time, making it difficult to prioritise them, let alone respond promptly. However, modern, cloud based SaaS platforms take a great deal of pressure off of staff in several ways.  

Alert Filtering

The best incident management platforms use advanced algorithms that intelligently filter duplicate and false alarm events, ensuring that operators only have to handle actionable events.  

Automatically distinguishing between non-actionable incidents and critical events in this way significantly reduces the workload – instead of sorting through a barrage of irrelevant alarms, operators can place their attention on resolving genuine issues rapidly.

Speechbot

Many alarm monitoring systems can be configured to automate certain actions such as escalating alarms or handling any non-urgent alarms. The burden on operators is therefore reduced, equipping ARCs to increase their capacity.

GeminiSense has robust mechanisms for handling non-urgent alerts, including Speechbot technology, which uses Natural Language Processing to screen alarms before a human agent gets involved.

Essentially, it handles non-urgent calls by calling designated contacts and giving them options such as transferring the call to a human agent, dispatching a guard or cancelling the alarm.

This technology lets organizations scale and maximise their capacity at a low cost. It’s also available in more than 100 languages.

Centralised Dashboards

Cloud based SaaS platforms make it possible to provide all operators with a single source of truth, accessible via convenient dashboards. These dashboards empower staff to quickly get a comprehensive overview of alerts in real-time.

Gemini LiveView

We recently launched a new feature called Gemini LiveView, an innovative platform for creating and sharing custom dashboards, data visualisations and reports.

Tailored to the needs of the alarm monitoring sector, it supports efficient, data-driven decision-making in a high-pressure environment. Users can identify trends and anomalies in real-time alarm data, proactively addressing potential issues.

Other features include data filtering and sorting, customisable alerts and interactive visualisations.

Remote Reset

Integrating alarms monitoring software with remote reset applications lets operators easily reset alarms after their activation. Without the need for physical intervention, they can quickly and conveniently address non-critical alarms for the ultimate efficiency.

Another benefit of remote reset is that it enables operators to handle multiple alarms simultaneously, further streamlining the process.

Task Scheduling

A range of control room tasks need to be completed periodically. However, operators should not be spending time on the admin involved in scheduling, managing, verifying and logging these tasks.

The best alarm monitoring software solutions should come with features for automating this admin, such as the GeminiSense Task Scheduler module.  Whether it’s ad-hoc tasks or recurring activities, the calendar-based module takes the burden of the shoulder of operators.

Integrations

Alarm monitoring software integrates with existing monitoring systems, sensors, and devices, allowing operators to consolidate data from multiple sources. Whether it’s security cameras, or a fire detection or intruder alarm system, operators can monitor all critical data from a single system. This reduces the need to switch between multiple interfaces, simplifying the monitoring process and saving time.

Integration with analytics tools allows for in-depth analysis of alarm data, providing insights into trends that indicate areas for improvement. For example, analysing response times helps to identify bottlenecks in the response workflow and highlight training needs.

In addition, discovering recurring patterns in the volume of alarm data based on specific time frames, such as certain days of the week, shifts, or time of day, helps with optimising staff levels and other resources.

Tele-Care Automation

One last area to highlight is the efficiency of our Tele-Care module. There are various potential bottlenecks when operators handle alarms from individuals in domestic situations or those with life-threatening medical conditions, disabilities or cognitive impairments. Any lack of clarity in these circumstances may prevent operators from providing the required help promptly.

However, our solution operates in conjunction with a fob or SOS button assigned to the user. The device is linked to their details (including health and medication information) – these details are passed to the operator along with specific instructions.

This makes it easy to handle the call effectively – whether the emergency services need contacting or less-urgent visits need arranging, all the information is provided instantly, allowing for the correct judgement call to be made swiftly.

Conclusion

Alarm monitoring software is a transformative tool for ARCs, ensuring operators can prioritise what’s critical and automate the rest.

For example, filtering false alarms and automatically handling non-urgent calls through our Speechbot helps ARCs to scale at a low cost. Automated task scheduling and remote reset further streamline operations, and the use of intuitive, real-time dashboards gives operators a convenient overview of alarm data, helping them promptly make accurate decisions.

GeminiSense is the UK’s leading alarm monitoring platform, providing a broad range of features for ARCs. To reassure customers that you have robust procedures in place to handle their alarms and provide a rapid response to critical incidents, contact us today to book a demo.