The popularity of monitored security systems has increased dramatically in recent years. Such systems typically include contact sensors installed at doors, windows and other potential entry points to a home, business establishment or other type of premises to be monitored and any number of motion sensors installed at selected locations inside the premises. More elaborate security systems may include any number of other types of sensors, for example, glass breakage detectors, panic or medical alert buttons, smoke detectors and temperature sensors.
When a security system is armed and a sensor is tripped, a sensor activation signal is transmitted to a main controller. In turn, the main controller issues an alarm signal to a central monitoring station, for example, via the public switched telephone network (“PSTN”) or a wireless network. Upon receipt of the alarm signal, an operator at the central monitoring station will evaluate the received alarm signal and determine whether to notify police, fire, emergency medical personnel, or other public or private safety personnel, typically, via a telephone call over the PSTN. Many monitored security system providers instruct the operator at the central monitoring station to attempt to contact the owner or resident of the building to determine if the received alarm signal is a false alarm and to contact the police or other appropriate public or private safety personnel if the operator is unable to contact the owner or resident of the building or unable to conclude, based upon their contact with the owner or resident, whether the received alarm signal is a false alarm.
More sophisticated monitored security systems have enhanced the ability of the operator at the central monitoring station to evaluate an alarm signal received from a monitored site. For example, U.S. 2002/0147982 A1 to Naidoo et al. is directed to a video security system in which alarm information and video relating to an alarm condition is transmitted to an operator at a central monitoring station in substantially real-time. Using the received alarm information and substantially real-time video, the operator verifies whether the alarm signal corresponds to an actual alarm condition and, if so, notifies the appropriate public or private safety personnel of the alarm condition at the home or other building. Such monitored security systems provide operators with additional information which enables the operator to better assess a detected alarm condition. As a result, the operator is able to classify many detected alarm conditions as false alarms, thereby eliminating any need for the operator to contact the appropriate public or private safety personnel. However, while the operator has additional information regarding a detected alarm condition, this information can only be relayed to the public or private safety personnel through an extended verbal exchange. As a result, in many emergency situations, information that would be useful in fashioning an appropriate response to a detected alarm condition is unavailable to the public or private safety personnel charged with the task of responding to the emergency situation.
It should be readily appreciated that the information used by the operator to assess a detected alarm condition would likely be even more useful by public or private safety personnel in fashioning an appropriate response to the alarm condition. It is, therefore, the object of this invention to provide a method and associated system by which alarm information used by monitoring personnel to assess a detected alarm condition may be forwarded to the public or private safety personnel charged with responding to the alarm condition.