News

Partnership for Priority Verified Alarm Response Announces Addition of Board Member

PPVAR Announced the addition of a new Board member 

Fresno, CA | August 27, 2024— The Partnership for Priority Verified Alarm Response (PPVAR), an organization established to promote the value of verification and validation of alarm events during the emergency response process, recently announced a new Vice President. 

Why TMA-AVS-01 Enhances Public Safety & Security Collaboration

This standardized scoring system [AVS-01] helps bridge the communication gap between private security monitoring centers and public safety agencies, leading to faster and more accurate responses to genuine threats.

How the AVS-01 Standard Revolutionizes the Monitoring Industry

SDM Video Monitoring Today, January 2024

By Mark McCall

In January 2023, the professional monitoring industry saw a major advancement with the finalization of TMA/ANSI AVS-01, the Alarm Validation Scoring standard. Developed by The Monitoring Association (TMA), this standard ushers in a new era of alarm response and communication protocols, with significant implications for monitoring centers, public safety, and the communities they serve.

AVS-01 Rollout: Insights from Alarm & Monitoring Industry Stakeholders

SDM Video Monitoring Today, January 2024

By Dave Holl (panel collaboration with ADT, Vector, ECC/PD, Rapid Response)

In response to the need for improved communication and situational awareness between the private security industry and public safety, the Partnership for Priority Verified Alarm Response (PPVAR) and The Monitoring Association (TMA) initiated a groundbreaking project years ago to establish an alarm-scoring standard.

AVS Alarm Validation Scoring and AI

IACP Police Chief Magazine Tech Talk Column, October 2023

By Mark McCall

In a collaborative effort between public safety and alarm industry professionals, a new ANSI standard, the AVS-01 Alarm Validation Scoring standard, has been created.

AVS-01 will transform the way alarm monitoring centers evaluate site alarm activations through the application of a scoring matrix, and it standardizes and enhances communications on alarm events between monitoring centers, emergency communications centers (ECCs), and law enforcement.

How Technology Will Impact AVS-01 & Alarm Response

SDM Video Monitoring Today, July 2023

By Mark McCall

One of the main purposes of the new AVS-01 (Alarm Validation Scoring) standard is to provide law enforcement with consistent and more informative calls for service for intrusion alarms. The intrusion alarm levels in the standard are designed to provide a more accurate description of the event, allowing law enforcement to better decide what resources to dispatch…

While AVS-01 was written to be technology agnostic, technology will certainly play a significant role, as will the central station operator who is the final arbitrator of the alarm disposition prior to making a call for service.

Alarm Validation Scoring Standard – AVS-01 – A Call to Action

SDM Video Monitoring Today, January 2023

By David Holl & Mark McCall

For nearly two years, a dedicated committee of alarm industry and public safety professionals have been diligently developing a collaborative ANSI standard that will transform the way central stations evaluate site alarm activations through the application of a scoring matrix.

TMA-AVS-01 Alarm Validation Standard Receives ANSI Accreditation

TMA Press Release, January 31, 2023

The Monitoring Association (TMA) Standards Committee has received confirmation that its TMA-AVS-01 Alarm Validation Standard has received official ANSI accreditation. Initiated in 2020, the standard provides a method of creating an alarm scoring or classification metric for unauthorized human activity detected by alarm systems. The alarm scoring will assist law enforcement with resource allocation and Call-for-Service prioritization.

David Holl, director of Public Safety, Lower Allen Township Department of Public Safety (PA), and one of the TMA-AVS-01 Committee co-chairs, remarked, “The development and evolution of this scoring standard has been an impressive collaborative effort of the alarm industry community and public safety professionals. It will change the way we all manage and respond to alarm events.”

Alarm Verification and Response: A new paradigm through an ANSI standard developed in partnership between Public Safety and the Alarm Industry.

PA Chief’s ‘Bulletin’ Summer 2022 issue

By David Holl, Public Safety Director for Lower Allen Township PA Police Department and Bob Finney, Director of Communications Technology for Collier County Florida Sheriff’s Office. 

There is no standard on how the myriad of alarm monitoring centers across the nation provide information to the ECCs. A new approach is needed and essential. The ‘TMA-AVS-01 Scoring Standard’ was initiated by a committee formed from the alarm industry, the Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory (NRTL), public safety (including law enforcement), and the ECC community.

Alarm Classification: The Next Evolution of Monitoring

By Paul Rothman, Security Business Magazine, May 6, 2022

A concerted effort among the industry to change how alarm information is received, exchanged and relayed should pay dividends for officer safety, prioritized response, false alarm reduction and much more.

The Importance of Keeping Score

NENA’s ‘The Call’ January 2022

By Frank Fernandez, President of Blueprints 4 Safety (B4S) Strategies Group, and

John Chiaramonte, ENP, Consulting Division President of Mission Critical Partners.

Unverified alarm notifications are plaguing law-enforcement and other emergency-response agencies nationwide—but a new approach to analyzing them offers a potential solution.

For more than a century, since the earliest pioneers in alarm monitoring began connecting their customers to public safety agencies, the task of separating false alarms from real emergencies has been a persistent challenge. On one hand, thousands of lives and millions of dollars in property are saved every year because of public safety’s response to monitored alarms, ranging from structure fires and carbon monoxide incidents to home/business invasions and burglaries/robberies. On the other hand, most alarms are unverified, and many turn out to be false. That creates a serious conundrum for the public safety community—respond or not?

How Verification Tech is Revolutionizing Alarm Response

Using video and audio to verify intrusion alarms is gaining momentum. Leadership of the Partnership for Priority Verified Alarm Response (PPVAR) explains how smarter technology is slashing false dispatches and optimizing law enforcement response.