TMA Committee announces the Co-Chairs for Monitoring Center Notification of Active Threat Standard (TMA-ATN-01)

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 Centre Notification of Active Threat Standard (TMA-ATN-01) Committee. 

Author's quote

“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.

Human interaction initiated as part of the alert may indicate an active shooter situation

He adds, “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 centres."

Glenn Schroeder continues, "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 centres and the public safety community.”

Monitoring centres

Monitoring centres 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 centre receives electronic notification that one of these systems has been activated, a standardised workflow within monitoring centres 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 centre 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.