What CAD Actually Does — and What It Doesn't
How a 911 call becomes an incident, how units are recommended and dispatched, how apparatus status and location are tracked, and why so many other department systems depend on CAD.
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Foundational technology education
Fire Tech 101
The systems behind modern fire and EMS operations, explained in plain English. Start here to understand what CAD, RMS, NERIS, NEMSIS, LMR, FirstNet, GIS, AVL, APIs, cloud software, and integrations actually do — and how they fit together. You do not need to know how to build these systems. You need to know enough to ask good questions when someone wants to sell you one, replace one, integrate one, or tell you that two systems cannot talk to each other.
In this track
Radio, FirstNet, and Broadband: What Is Different?
LMR, FirstNet, commercial cellular networks, Wi-Fi, priority, and preemption solve different communications problems. Learn why broadband supplements mission-critical radio rather than simply replacing it.
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Records Management and the Move to NERIS
What fire department records systems do, how incident data moves from CAD into reporting systems, what changed with the transition from NFIRS to NERIS, and why fire departments should understand their data even when a vendor submits it for them.
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ePCR, NEMSIS, and the EMS Data Chain
How EMS documentation moves from the field into agency, state, and national data systems — and why connecting EMS records with hospital outcomes remains one of the biggest opportunities in prehospital data.
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GIS, AVL, and Location Data: Where Is Everything?
Maps are only the visible part of GIS. Learn how address data, response boundaries, unit locations, AVL, routing, and geospatial information influence 911, dispatch, response, planning, and analytics.
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API, Interface, Integration: What Vendors Mean
These words appear in almost every technology sales conversation. Learn what they actually mean, why connecting two systems can be easy or extremely difficult, and what to ask when a vendor says “yes, we integrate with that.”
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Cloud, SaaS, and Data Ownership
More public-safety software now runs in the cloud and is purchased as a subscription. Learn what that actually means, what your vendor is responsible for, and why access to your own data matters.
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UAS Basics for Public Safety
Part 107, public aircraft operations, airspace, waivers, BVLOS, training, and the basic regulatory framework a fire department should understand before launching a drone program.
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Tell us what is missing
Pieces with a reading list point at the clearest outside treatment of the subject we could find and verify. If something here is wrong, missing, or in the wrong order for how a department actually works, that is worth knowing now.
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