On Thursday May 5, 2022, just after midnight, Atlanta Police Department (APD) officers responded to a missing person call. A 74-year-old woman had gone missing and her niece was concerned. After several unsuccessful efforts by officers to locate the missing woman, officers began searching for the woman using APD’s network of cameras. While reviewing footage, officers found video of the missing woman walking near the Gateway Center in Atlanta, prior to boarding a Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) bus. With assistance from MARTA police, officers determined the correct bus route, and, much to everyone’s relief, located the woman. Recorded footage from the operation described above can be found here. The call ended successfully and a family was reunited, largely due to a software platform developed by Fūsus, an emerging leader in Real-Time Crime Center (RTCC) solutions and the system provider powering APD’s camera network.

Today, Axon is announcing our partnership with Fūsus to further expand the capabilities of Axon Respond, Axon’s real-time situational awareness operating system. Fūsus’ key differentiator is its Real-Time Crime Center in the Cloud (RTC3) platform, which enables private owners of cameras, including small business owners, large retailers, shopping malls, healthcare systems and educational institutions, to voluntarily provide public safety agencies with access to their camera feeds on customizable terms. The integration of Fūsus into the broader Axon Ecosystem will enable better community-based policing efforts while simultaneously providing public safety agencies with an all-encompassing real-time operational picture, Axon Respond.

At Axon, we are building the largest global ecosystem of connected public safety devices and services. A centerpiece of this ecosystem is technology that enables Real-Time Operations through powerful situational awareness. In 2020, we launched Axon Respond with a vision to provide better situational awareness by filling the critical information gaps in public safety with a network of intelligent, connected devices that enable faster response times and increased safety through live maps, live-streaming capabilities, configurable alerts and detailed audit logs. With our Fūsus partnership and integration, Axon Respond has just become an even more valuable tool for public safety agencies.

Axon + Fūsus

The Fūsus RTC3 platform already integrates with Axon Evidence, as all of the feeds from surveillance cameras and other IoT sensors connected to the Fūsus platform generate digital evidence that can be saved in Axon Evidence. In the future, we expect to integrate live-streaming, location and other sensor information from Fūsus-enabled fixed surveillance cameras into Axon Respond, and similarly we will enable the live-streaming, GPS and alerting capabilities of Axon Respond-enabled products into the Fūsus RTC3 platform. These bidirectional integrations will deliver enhanced situational awareness to law enforcement agencies and optimize incident response and resource management in the field through four core real-time operations capabilities:

• Know before it's voiced: From knowing the locations of individual first responders to maintaining visibility into developing situations, users are able to proactively take actions to greatly increase the safety of both the first responders and the broader community.
• Reduce avoidable use of force: When sensors in the field indicate that a potential escalation is likely, users can preemptively act to prevent it before it happens.
• Optimize the deployment of limited resources: By providing situational awareness into developing calls-for-service in real-time, dispatchers are better equipped to deploy the optimal level of necessary, yet often scarce resources.
• Faster response times: Expedite responses to calls-for-service through a faster, more intuitive cloud-based interface which empowers users to complete necessary tasks anytime and anywhere.

Axon’s mission is to Protect Life, and two years ago we took a major step towards enabling that goal with the launch of Axon Respond. Today, we are proud to expand and strengthen Axon Respond’s capabilities through the Fūsus RTC3 platform. In connection with the partnership announcement, Axon will be launching new bidirectional APIs for Axon Respond that allow for flow of camera and other sensor data. Fūsus will join RapidSOS as an inaugural partner using these APIs in support of the customers and communities we jointly serve. Strategic partnerships and integrations are key to making connected devices and software more efficient, and we are excited to provide our public safety partners with continuously-improving situational awareness to help them protect life.

About the author:
Ran is Axon’s SVP of Real-Time Operations. Prior to joining Axon, Ran was at Amazon Alexa, where he most recently served as Director and General Manager. While at Amazon, he led the development of mobile and multimodal Alexa shopping experiences, including delivering Alexa support to hundreds of millions of mobile customers. He previously led the development of Alexa's calling, messaging and "Drop-In" video calling services. He founded STNC Ltd, a company that built the world's first web browser for mobile phones and was acquired by Microsoft, and also led the transition of Skype message platform from legacy peer-to-peer architecture to a mobile-optimized cloud platform.

Amazon and Alexa are trademarks of Amazon, Fūsus and RTC3 are trademarks of Fūsus LLC and Microsoft and Skype are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.