Indiana 911 call center turns to AI to take non-emergency calls amid critical staffing shortage

Across the country, 911 call centers are so understaffed that some are turning to artificial intelligence to answer non-emergency calls.

At Lake County 911 in Indiana, an AI call taker named "AVA" has handled more than 35,000 calls within just months.

But how does it work?

Lake County 911 takes calls for 44 different police, fire and EMS agencies across the county. AVA has taken more than 444,000 calls so far this year, but not every call is a true emergency. 

"You need to do more with less," said Mark Swiderski, executive director at Lake County 911.

He explained that emergency communications centers across the country, including his, are facing a critical staffing shortage.

"It's really challenging to get people to want to apply for this career," he said. 

AVA, which stands for "Automated Voice Assistant," is helping fill that void—answering more than 35,000 non-emergency calls in the last six months alone. 

The goal? Free up human call takers and dispatchers to focus on calls where seconds can make a difference.

"So if they need assistance, but maybe they don't need a human being to assist them, we can provide them that assistance in a timely manner as well," Swiderski said.

AVA is a product of a company called Aurelian — founded by University of Chicago graduates Max Keenan and James Liu. 

"For the average 911 center, 70% of their calls aren't even 911 calls," said Aurelian CEO and co-founder Max Keenan. "We thought this would be a great use of AI to help them focus more of their time and energy on the actual emergencies, and make sure the community gets the best response possible."

Aurelian currently serves more than 60 agencies across the country, including Lake County 911 — representing more than 15 million residents.

One other advantage AVA has over a human call taker? She can talk to dozens of people at once.

Keenan says that during training, they've had AVA handle as many as 300 calls simultaneously.

"I think that AVA is giving us the opportunity to be available for those people when they need us," Swiderski said.

But with any new AI technology, there is also the question of whether it could eventually replace the people doing the job.

Swiderski says it is not taking dispatch jobs from his location, but pointed out that they still have a staff member checking AVA's work. 

They're looking into other ways to incorporate AVA into their workflow, because when it comes to answering the call, AVA is proving AI may be ready to pick up the slack.

"If this allows us to answer that call even one more ring sooner, I think it's doing its job," Swiderski said.