AI Triage

Overview#

At 2:47 AM, a 911 call centre receives 34 simultaneous calls. Four of them contain gunshot sounds in the background. Two involve callers who sound like children. One is a prank. The remaining 27 are noise complaints and fender-benders. A dispatcher handling calls manually cannot sort that queue fast enough. Every second that a life-threatening call sits unrouted is a second that matters.

The AI Triage module processes every call through a real-time intelligence pipeline. Speech is transcribed as it happens. Sentiment, audio events, and keywords are scored in parallel. Each call receives a P1-through-P5 priority before the dispatcher even picks up. Life-threatening situations reach the top of the queue automatically. The dispatcher works the list; the AI keeps the list sorted.

Key Features#

Real-Time Call Transcription: Speech-to-text transcription of emergency calls with multi-language support, keyword extraction, and streaming capabilities for live call processing.
Sentiment Analysis: Analyse caller emotional state to identify panic, distress, aggression, and confusion, with automatic escalation recommendations when urgency thresholds are exceeded.
Background Audio Classification: Classify audio events such as gunshots, explosions, screams, vehicle crashes, and other emergency indicators with automatic escalation for critical events.
Dynamic Priority Scoring (P1-P5): Multi-component risk scoring that combines sentiment, audio, and keyword signals to assign priority levels from P1 (critical, immediate life threat) to P5 (informational), with configurable target response times.
Emergency Keyword Detection: Automatic extraction and categorisation of emergency-relevant keywords (weapons, medical, fire, crime, traffic, danger) from call transcripts with weighted scoring.
Surge Redistribution: Monitor PSAP capacity in real time and automatically redistribute calls during surge conditions to partner PSAPs, overflow centres, or AI deflection queues.
AI Callback System: Schedule and manage automated callbacks for non-urgent (P4/P5) calls, reducing queue pressure while maintaining service quality with multi-attempt retry logic and human escalation.
Predictive Staffing: Forecast call volumes and staffing needs by hour, generate proactive alerts for understaffing or surge conditions, and provide shift coverage analysis.
Smart Triage Gate: A structured triage evaluation runs on every significant transcript update, producing one of five outcomes: escalate immediately (P1/P2 life threats), dispatch needed (P3), follow-up queue (P4), prank logged (P5), or pending. The triage gate enforces a one-way escalation rule where a call that reaches immediate escalation can never be downgraded, ensuring life-threatening situations are never missed. Triage decisions control when dispatcher broadcasts are sent, preventing information overload from non-emergency calls.
Vulnerable Caller Detection: Over 30 phrases associated with children, elderly, and distressed callers trigger immediate escalation regardless of other signals. Phrases such as "help my mom", "my dad won't wake up", and "I'm a kid" are treated as critical indicators requiring human dispatcher involvement without delay.
Prank and Non-Emergency Filtering: The triage system identifies prank indicators (8 phrases including "just kidding", "it's a joke") and non-emergency keywords (20 terms including "noise complaint", "pothole") to route calls appropriately. Emergency keywords always override prank or non-emergency indicators to prevent false filtering of genuine emergencies.
PSAP Priority Floor: Emergency line calls enforce a P3 minimum priority floor. P4 (follow-up) and P5 (prank) outcomes on PSAP lines are automatically clamped to P3, ensuring every emergency line caller receives at least a standard response.
Manual Priority Override: Supervisors can override AI-assigned priorities with documented reasoning for full audit trail accountability.
Programmable API Access: Full API support for all triage operations including transcription, analysis, priority evaluation, surge management, and staffing predictions.

Priority Levels#

P1 (Critical): Immediate life threat, target response within 60 seconds. Risk score 80-100.
P2 (High): Urgent response needed, target response within 3 minutes. Risk score 60-79.
P3 (Medium): Standard response, target response within 10 minutes. Risk score 40-59.
P4 (Low): Non-urgent, target response within 30 minutes. Risk score 20-39. Eligible for AI callback.
P5 (Informational): Information only, target response within 1 hour. Risk score 0-19. Eligible for AI callback.

Use Cases#

Emergency call centres process incoming 911/emergency calls through a complete AI pipeline: transcribe, analyse sentiment, classify audio events, extract keywords, and assign dynamic priority for dispatcher routing.

PSAP operators managing capacity across multiple sites use surge redistribution to automatically balance call load when a major incident overwhelms a single centre, maintaining acceptable wait times without manual intervention.

Public safety agencies managing high call volumes during major events deflect P4/P5 calls to an automated callback queue, freeing live operators for genuine emergencies while ensuring every caller receives a response.

Emergency service planners use predictive staffing models to identify shift coverage gaps before they become service failures, acting on volume forecasts rather than reacting to overloaded queues.

Integration#

The AI Triage module integrates with other Argus modules and external systems:

Alert Management: Triage results and priority evaluations feed into the broader alert management system for unified incident tracking.
Case Management: High-priority calls can automatically generate cases for investigation follow-up.
Audit Trail: All priority evaluations, manual overrides, and callback outcomes are logged for compliance and quality assurance.
Command Center: Real-time surge status and staffing metrics display in the operational command centre dashboard.

Open Standards#

NENA i3 / NENA-STA-021 (NG9-1-1): The triage pipeline ingests calls via the NENA i3 Emergency Incident Data Object (EIDO) JSON schema, applying the standardised P1, P5 priority vocabulary and i3 service URN taxonomy (RFC 5031 / RFC 6443) to classify and route emergency calls to the correct PSAP queue.
SIP (RFC 3261) with PIDF-LO: Inbound NG9-1-1 calls arrive as SIP INVITE messages whose PIDF-LO bodies are parsed to extract geodetic and civic caller location, feeding the triage gate's risk scoring before a dispatcher answers.
RFC 7852, Additional Data Related to an Emergency Call: Subscriber, device, and communications information blocks defined in RFC 7852 and NENA-STA-012 are consumed during triage to enrich call context, supporting more accurate priority assignment for P1/P2 escalations.
SIPREC (RFC 7865 / RFC 7866): Call recordings ingested by the SIPREC recorder module supply the audio stream fed into real-time transcription and background audio classification; RFC 6873 metadata extensions carry participant and stream identity into the triage audit trail.
Real-Time Text / RFC 4103 + ITU-T T.140: The NG9-1-1 RTT bridge surfaces text-based emergency calls (deaf and hard-of-hearing callers) through the same triage gate as voice calls, with ITU-T T.140 character encoding over SIP/RTP and WebRTC data channels (RFC 8865).
ISO 639-1: Language codes are carried on every transcription session, enabling the multi-language speech-to-text pipeline to route non-English calls to the correct keyword dictionaries and AI classification prompt.
GraphQL (June 2018 specification): All triage operations, including priority scoring, rule management, bulk triage, manual override, and feedback, are exposed as authenticated Strawberry GraphQL mutations and queries, consumed by the dispatcher UI and third-party integrations alike.
W3C Verifiable Credentials v2: NENA i3 additional-data blocks attached to high-priority calls are wrapped in an Ed25519-signed Verifiable Credential envelope with deterministic SHA-256 canonicalisation, providing tamper-evident provenance for P1/P2 triage decisions in the audit trail.

Last Reviewed: 2026-04-02 Last Updated: 2026-04-14