TMA names committee co-chairs for monitoring center notification of active threat standard

The Monitoring Association (TMA) is pleased to announce that Anita Ostrowski, Vice President of Central Station Services, Vector Security, and David Holl, Director of Public Safety, Lower Allen Township (PA), will serve as co-chairs of the ANSI-proposed TMA Monitoring Center Notification of Active Threat Standard (TMA-ATN-01) Committee.

“Collectively, Anita and David bring a broad and diverse scope of knowledge and experience to their leadership roles for this critical standard.” stated TMA Standards Committee Chairman Glenn Schroeder.

“TMA’s goal in standards development is to provide its members and the industry at large with timely and consensus-based standards that address various operational and technology-driven processes executed by today’s monitoring centers. As our communities are seeing increasing incidents of violence and new, rapidly evolving detection technologies are being introduced, TMA-ATN-01 is vital for monitoring centers and the public safety community.”  

Monitoring centers are increasingly monitoring shot detection, weapons detection, manual lockdown notification, as well as other innovative threat detecting technologies. Human interaction initiated as part of the alert may indicate an active shooter situation. These detection technologies and subsequent alerts are typically from facilities with high human presence. 

When a monitoring center receives electronic notification that one of these systems has been activated, a standardized workflow within monitoring centers is needed to ensure timely and accurate notification to identified entities, such as first responders, employees, students etc. 

This standard will develop an efficient means for the monitoring center to provide responding authorities with information that assists with an efficient and safe response. The standard may also facilitate means to initiate other actions, such as “shelter in place”, “wait for further instructions”, and notifications via multiple methods.

Learn more about the standard on TMA’s website at https://tma.us/standards/tma-atn-01/

The Committee co-chairs will host an informational kick-off meeting on April 12th at 2:00 pm ET via Zoom. Those interested in attending should register at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwkf-uurTsuG9LMWNVwP-VCP7HdZLiEI18V 

Call for Participation

We are looking for committee participants from monitoring centers, systems manufacturers, emergency notification manufacturers and service providers, public safety, school districts, and other types of large public/private management. TMA membership is not required. 

Those interested in joining the Committee may apply here https://tma.us/tma-atn-01-participation-form/.

Any questions on the proposed Standard may be addressed to [email protected].