Two neighboring rural counties, two dispatch centers, one common platform supporting more than 900 square miles of mountainous terrain

Caliber Public Safety announced that Highland County and Bath County, Virginia began operations on Caliber Hosted CAD on Tuesday, October 6, with both counties functioning inside a shared hosted environment. The setup allows each county to maintain its own dispatch operation while using one common platform, which builds a solid base for coordination between the two neighboring areas.

For rural agencies, interoperability often comes down to handling incidents that cross county lines. Mutual aid happens regularly in this section of western Virginia, where Highland County spans about 416 square miles and serves roughly 2,300 residents, while Bath County covers more than 500 square miles and serves about 4,100 residents. Combined, the counties cover a mostly forested and mountainous area with limited dispatchers and responders on duty during any shift.

The shared tenant model tackles this challenge head on. Each county keeps the configuration, workflows, and local control required to manage its own center. Both counties use the same core platform, which eliminates the technical hurdles that usually exist between separate CAD systems in nearby jurisdictions.

"Two counties sharing one hosted CAD environment is uncommon in rural public safety, and it required solid coordination between both counties and our teams to achieve," said Michael Sturgeon, Senior Project Manager at Caliber Public Safety. "What counts is what the dispatchers and responders now have. Each county runs its own center as needed, and neither works in isolation any longer."

Capabilities Delivered

Highland County, which entered the Caliber CAD customer group through this project, now runs Hosted CAD with integrated mapping and CJIS query, plus Google Places address validation and a LinX interface for regional information sharing. The county also uses Caliber's Online RMS for sworn and non-sworn staff. For dispatchers handling a county with one of the highest mean elevations east of the Mississippi River, verified addressing and quick access to criminal justice data cut down on delays during calls.

Bath County runs Hosted CAD with mapping and CJIS query, along with interfaces to PulsePoint and RapidSOS with alerts. The RapidSOS links deliver caller location and device data to the dispatcher at the start of the call, which helps in terrain where a caller may struggle to describe their position. The PulsePoint interface sends cardiac arrest notifications to trained citizens and off-duty responders nearby, a useful feature in a county with long response distances.

A Migration, Not Just an Implementation

Bath County has used Caliber premise CAD and Online RMS for years. As part of this project, the county shifted its premise-based system to Hosted CAD, and Caliber performed a data conversion to move the historical CAD databases into the new setup.

This step often challenges agencies moving from a premise system. Years of call history, incident records, and master index data support case continuity, state reporting duties, and institutional knowledge. Data conversion forms a structured part of every Caliber implementation, with the team handling the technical transformation, validation, and loading so key historical records transfer intact.

Caliber products are hosted at Nlets, the International Justice and Public Safety Network, and follow FBI CJIS policies, standards, and guidelines. The facilities feature multi-site hot backup disaster recovery and redundant network paths to key state and federal entities.

Project Teams

The go-live needed coordination among both counties and Caliber's Professional Services, Deployment, Training, Engineering, and Support teams. Caliber congratulates the public safety professionals of Highland County and Bath County on a successful implementation and looks forward to a strong partnership.

About Caliber Public Safety

Caliber Public Safety delivers integrated technology solutions for law enforcement, fire/EMS, corrections, and 911 communications agencies. The Caliber platform includes CAD, Mobile, Online RMS, and JailTracker, all developed by and for public safety professionals. With attention to reliability, interoperability, and ease of use, Caliber supports hundreds of agencies nationwide, helping first responders focus less on technology and more on serving their communities.

SOURCE Caliber Public Safety