Our Control Room Officers use a technology called GoodSAM (short for ‘Good Samaritan’).
GoodSAM allows our Control Room Officers to:
- Receive a live video stream of an incident from a 999 caller.
- Share that footage with fire crews.
- Receive a live video stream from fire crews.
How it works
When someone calls 999 the Control Room Officer taking the call might think they can understand the situation better by seeing a live video stream of the incident.
If so, they’ll ask the caller for permission to send them a text message. The text message contains a secure link that opens a live video stream directly from the caller’s phone to the Control Room.
Having seen the footage, the Control Room Officer might decide to send more fire engines, or specialist capabilities. They can also share that footage with crews and Incident Commanders on the way to the incident so they know what to expect.
If crews request a link from the Control Room, they can use GoodSAM to send the Control Room footage back from the incident ground. This gives the Control Rooms Officers a better understanding of how the incident is developing as they continue to take 999 calls.
Pinpointing locations
GoodSAM can be used to provide accurate location details from 999 callers. It offers eastings and northings, What3Words and longitude and latitude. This feature is especially helpful for incidents like wildfires - where we need to send crews to a precise location, distant from any identifiable landmarks.
Translation service
GoodSAM can be used as a translation service for 104 different languages. This allows Control Room Officers to send a text to callers in English which is then translated and delivered as a message in the caller’s chosen language. The caller can then reply in their chosen language before the message comes back to the Control Room Officer in English.