UK ITS completes major upgrade of university’s E911 system

Recently, University of Kentucky Information Technology Services (UK ITS), in partnership with UKPD, completed a major upgrade of the university’s E911 Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) system.

This system, crucial to emergency response operations across campus, comprises critical infrastructure that allows UKPD to receive and manage responses to 911 calls.

After several months of work, the UK ITS Networking and Infrastructure team completed this latest project ensuring that the university’s critical infrastructure supports emergency operations.

The PSAP system is a dedicated call center that receives and dispatches 911 calls. Upgrading the PSAP system enhances the reliability of E911, or Enhanced 911, enabling features like automatic location reporting from university phones during emergency calls.

The University of Kentucky maintains its own PSAP system through UKPD to ensure reliable emergency communications and responses for the university community — which includes tens of thousands of students, faculty, staff and daily visitors.

Upgrading the PSAP system required careful planning between UK ITS, UKPD and third-party partners as the project coincided with UKPD’s move to its new headquarters. This included ensuring that emergency communications were not disrupted during the move and upgrade.

"The refresh delivered an infrastructure with modern functionality that provides call routing, location services and critical communication tools that UKPD relies on to protect the campus community," said Associate CIO of Enterprise Networking & Infrastructure Hector Rios. "Its design emphasizes continuity of service, helping minimize the impact of potential disruptions."

Upgrading the PSAP system is necessary for reliable emergency response across campus.

"This project modernized the previous system installed in 2016 with a new geographically redundant 911 platform with a full hardware and software refresh," said UK ITS Director of Enterprise Telephony Tim Worley. "This new system gives emergency services dispatchers access to the most current technology for responding to critical situations requiring the assistance of law enforcement, the fire department or medical personnel."

By investing in future-ready systems, this upgrade reflects UK ITS’s commitment to strengthening technology that supports modern infrastructure and public safety across the university community. 

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