Event Dispatch Console Project

These are just notes right now, playing with the idea.

Introduction

This document describes what features would be required for a custom event dispatch system. This system would be used by Utah Radio volunteers listening to their scanners, and would send alerts of important events to the community at large (as a free public service).

Current System

Currently there are two ways alerts are sent by Utah Radio volunteers to the community:

1. Twitter
2. Radio Reference Forums

Goals

The goals of a custom system would be:

• Reduce/eliminate event reporting lag time.
  • Right now people are getting alerts 10-15 minutes after an event happens. Using custom technologies it should be possible to redue that time significantly.
• Encourage (but not strictly enforce) standard message formatting.
• Permit volunteers to submit events via a web page, e-mail, or SMS (cell phone).
• Ideally, update all sources at once (web site, e-mail, twitter, RR forum, RSS feed).
  • Have ability to send different messages to different sources.
• Keep a log of who did what, when.
• Permit 'follow up' information to be attached to a previous alert.
• Easy to use.
• Possibly add the ability to collaborate with other dispatch volunteers real time.
  • This could be done with a chat system on a web page, for example.
• Restrict access so that only approved volunteers can post everywhere at once.
  • Other people can still post to the RR forums or twitter directly if they already have accounts).
• Interfaces with RR database (where possible) to get latest meta data.
• Support 500-9000 followers.
• Support 5-10 'posts' per day.
• Support 1-5 volunteer dispatchers.