[CCCNFBW] Clark County’s 911 center launches AI system to handle nonemergency calls

[Merribeth Greenberg]

I found this interesting.

Clark County’s 911 center launches AI system to handle nonemergency calls
AVA intended to ease demand on human call takers, officials say
By Tyler Brown, Columbian Staff Reporter
Published: June 15, 2026, 1:17pm
Updated: June 16, 2026, 8:54am
Clark County’s 911 center launches AI system to handle nonemergency calls -
The Columbian
<https://www.columbian.com/news/2026/jun/15/cresa-launches-ai-system-to-handle-nonemergency-calls/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=Morning+Briefing>

Clark County’s emergency dispatch center is turning to AI to ease the
burden on human 911 call takers.

Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency has launched AVA, a new artificial
intelligence system to handle nonemergency calls. CRESA administrators hope
the system will help address the dispatch center’s address staffing
constraints.

Developed by the technology company Aurelian, AVA is intended to free up
live operators by fielding 311 calls and allowing call takers to prioritize
911 emergencies for the county’s 500,000 residents, said Andrew Hahn with
Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency.

But it’s not like a traditional keypad phone tree, according to a news
release from Aurelian. AVA is designed to engage callers in natural
conversation and respond to inflection and tone in English, Spanish,
Ukrainian and Russian, the most common languages requiring assistance in
Clark County, Hahn said.

“Dispatch centers across the country are being asked to do more with the
same teams, and the agencies that respond best are the ones that find ways
to protect their telecommunicators’ time,” Max Keenan, CEO and founder of
Aurelian, said in a news release. “CRESA has built a strong regional
operation that serves a large and growing population. Deploying AVA means
their call takers and dispatchers can meet every emergency without being
pulled away by calls that don’t require them.”

As of Monday, over 3 million calls have been handled by AVA and CORA,
another AI system from Aurelian, according to its website.

Hahn said the AI can scale to handle a large volume of concurrent calls
without a hold system and is currently answering half of the nonemergency
volume. He said CRESA typically has about five call takers on the floor at
a time who answer about 1,500 calls per day — 600 nonemergency and 900
emergency.

CRESA does not have a metric for queue wait times, but callers who reach
AVA are assisted immediately, Hahn said.

Hahn said call takers average a pickup time of under 15 seconds, but
maintaining that speed relies entirely on staffing levels, which face
severe physical and procedural bottlenecks. He said CRESA’s budget is not
the primary constraint limiting new hires; rather, the facility lacks the
physical space to add more than its current 15 to 20 workstations.

The hiring time for a telecommunicator can take up to eight or nine months,
requiring extensive public safety background checks, as well as
psychological and physical hearing examinations. Hahn said many applicants
drop out because they cannot wait for the process to conclude, saying the
agency recently closed applications for a role that will not officially
start until 2027.

Because of these staffing constraints, preserving human energy for real
emergencies is critical, Hahn said. By fielding 311 calls, AVA directly
relieves the call takers and allows them to focus their attention on
life-threatening emergencies.

“The big thing to note is call takers have an extraordinary amount of
task-handling they have to manage. It is a shocking thing to listen to the
kinds of calls these people have to take,” Hahn said. “One call can be
someone calling to complain about, ‘Hey, my neighbors’ music woke up my
baby.’ But the next call can be ‘My baby is blue in the face.’ ”

To prevent serious technological errors or so-called AI hallucinations from
interfering with emergency responses, AVA primarily collects information,
transcribes calls and follows strict routing rules to provide forms or send
codes. Hahn said the AI actively monitors a caller’s tone of voice and
listens for specific triggers. If an emergency is described or someone
sounds like they’re in a panic, AVA automatically kicks the call over to a
live agent.

Hahn stressed that deploying AI will not lead to job losses.

“People are wary that this is a way to cut staff, but that’s just not the
case. Real humans are the heroes, and we want to make sure they’re well
taken care of,” Hahn said. “This is meant to lighten their load and handle
nonemergency calls faster without having to wait as long.”

Dave Fuller, director of CRESA, echoed this sentiment in the agency’s news
release.

“Our telecommunicators are the critical link between our community and the
first responders,” Fuller said. “Every nonemergent or routine call that AVA
handles is time and focus returned to answering and responding to emergency
calls. For the people we serve, that means quicker access to help when it
matters most.”






Beth Greenberg
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