Why Brazos County Is Replacing a 20-Year-Old CAD System to Unify Dispatch Across Four Agencies

Breaking Down Barriers Between Dispatch Centers

When a 911 call crosses city boundaries, dispatchers don’t have time to wonder whether systems will talk to each other, they need it to just work.  In emergency response, coordination is only as strong as the systems behind it. Agencies are asked to share information faster, support responders in real time, and work across boundaries that 911 calls do not always follow.

In Brazos County, Texas, that work happens every day between the agencies in its two major cities, Bryan and College Station, and one of the largest public universities in the nation, Texas A&M University. Each keeps its own public safety operations, but dispatchers regularly transfer calls, relay incident details, and share ambulance, fire, and EMS units across boundaries. When the systems behind that coordination are inconsistent, response times can slow.

For years, that coordination has run through an interface between separate CAD systems. Different GIS datasets mean addresses sometimes cross the interface as unverifiable, requiring manual correction. When the interface goes down entirely, dispatchers lose the automated link between centers and fall back to phone-based coordination.

That is the reality that led the Bryan City Council to approve CentralSquare’s Enterprise CAD platform as part of a multi-agency partnership with Brazos County and local emergency services districts. The decision provides an updated intelligence platform that delivers real-time information to officers when they need it.

Why Now: A 20-Year-Old Platform Reaching Its Limits

The switch indicates a broader challenge faced by many public safety agencies: aging systems can only support modern emergency response for a limited time.

Laura Blackburn, Associate Director of Brazos County 911, oversees an agency managing the 911 network and infrastructure across Brazos County, handling nearly 100,000 calls annually through five answering points. The agency also runs a 24/7 multi-jurisdictional communications center serving 13 law enforcement and fire agencies. For such a complex operation, choosing the right CAD platform is crucial, and CentralSquare’s Enterprise CAD provided the integrated, regionally aligned foundation Blackburn’s team needed.

“This is a win for Brazos County 911 and those we serve.”

“With College Station PD on CentralSquare Enterprise CAD and Texas A&M switching to it, aligning our agency on the same platform improves collaboration and response, ensuring we serve our community better now and in the future,” said Blackburn.

Brazos County 911 will share the same CentralSquare Enterprise CAD as the other two agencies, cutting third-party interfaces and GIS mismatches that caused issues.

From Workarounds to a Shared Platform

The transition to Enterprise CAD is a structural change in how dispatch data moves between agencies. A shared Esri-based GIS platform will standardize address data across all agencies, helping end the validation errors that have challenged the current interface and enabling more frequent GIS updates, potentially as often as weekly instead of the current monthly cycle.

Enterprise CAD’s unit recommendation engine gives dispatchers more granular control over fire and EMS assignments, and Mobile X puts call information on tablets and phones for county fire departments that currently rely on laptop-based systems or radio traffic alone.

With College Station PD on Enterprise CAD and Texas A&M in transition, the outcome is a county where all three primary dispatch centers share a common platform. This leads to better collaboration and faster response times, helping keep communities safe and reducing the risk of outages lasting several days.

The Bigger Picture

The decision to switch to Enterprise CAD wasn’t due to system failure or call spike. Brazos County 911 handles about 100,000 calls annually across five points, slightly declining over recent years, while incidents remain steady.

Instead, the decision was prompted by a more proactive reality: the existing legacy system could no longer support the level of coordination between jurisdictions that modern emergency response requires.

What This Means for Other Agencies

Brazos County’s path will look familiar to many public safety agencies weighing similar decisions. A few takeaways stand out:

• Plan for the systems behind agency collaborations you already have. Cross-agency coordination between Bryan/Brazos County, College Station, and Texas A&M has existed for years. Aligning the underlying CAD turns everyday cooperation into a single shared workflow.
• Treat GIS as a bridge. Using a shared Esri-based GIS layer eliminates the address validation errors that interface-based setups can introduce.
• Push capabilities to the field. Tablet and phone-based access to call information through Mobile X reduces dependence on laptop-based setups and radio traffic alone.
• Move before the legacy system forces your hand. Reduced support cadence on a 20-year-old platform drove the timing here, but the structural benefits will outlast any one product cycle.

What’s Next

The agencies are currently working toward a 12-18-month implementation timeline. For Brazos County 911, the goal is to provide a modern system that better supports how agencies already work together.

To learn more about CentralSquare’s public safety solutions, visit centralsquare.com.