Isle of Man Establishes First Joint Control Room in British Isles

The Challenge

With a population of 85,000 citizens, the Isle of Man is only 31 miles long by 10 miles wide. However, its emergency services operated from three separate control rooms using different systems to manage incidents.

Following the UK government’s “Invest to Save Budget” initiative, chief officers from the three emergency services agreed to combine call-handling and dispatching operations into a single center managed by the Department of Home Affairs Communications Division. To successfully accommodate each agency’s workflows, the island needed a computer-aided dispatch (CAD) solution built for coordinating incident management for multiple agencies.

The Solution

Following an intensive evaluation process, Isle of Man government officials selected industry-leading CAD software from Hexagon’s Safety & Infrastructure division because it best fit the island’s requirements, including multi-agency capabilities.

With the CAD system, the unique tri-service control room operates with 3-5 staff members per shift and answers up to 35,000 calls per month, resulting in more than 2,500 incidents successfully managed through the system. The volume of calls increases significantly during the famous Festival of Motorcycling and the Isle of Man TT Race, an annual motorcycle race that increases the island’s population by up to 50 percent.