CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (WAND)- A new AI program aims to organize police reports for emergency centers.

According to Assistant Professor Yun Huang at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Urbana-Champaign, emergency call center employees typically are looking at six screens at a time. Between that, answering time-sensitive calls, and sending out the appropriate department, it can be extremely stressful. 

With the new program, SafeRbot, the goal is to encourage more people to report incidents online. These reports would then be sent directly to emergency call centers.

"Our system not only take the input of the details, but also, process them based on, you know, the type of incidents we rank the priority on their, you know, definition about what is important and what is the different level of severity of the incidents," said Huang. 

The system can detect the language being spoken and determine if a switch to another language is necessary to accurately complete the report.

"Some of our international students, especially in our community, they, you know, they are not native speakers and sometimes they're hesitant to talk to police officers on the phone, even if they, would like to do that...We also want to provide them with local resources that can help them guide to, you know, guide them through addressing some of the concerns and the issues they have," said Informatics PhD student Yiren Liu. 

The system can locate the proper department-- and divide teams of first responders appropriately.

"Our system will be able to forward this information to, based on their jurisdiction and to the correct or appropriate kind of like department. Like whether it's the public safety department of the city within the city or, the police department within a specific jurisdiction area," said Liu. 

As the system is still in its early stages, both Huang and Liu are eager to gather community input to help further develop the program.

They are working closely with Urbana police department, Champaign police department, and the school's police training program, as a way to gain more knowledge, and develop the program further. 

All information submitted in a report will go directly to the emergency center for appropriate handling.

For more information on SafeRBot, click here. 

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