Alarm Center

1. Monitor the status and conditions of 120 microwave tower sites that provide communication to the Public Safety agencies all across the state
    
2. Monitoring the status and alarm conditions of repeater radios and communication equipment for Kentucky State police, Emergency Management, National Weather Service, NOAA Weather Service, Kentucky National Guard, and Fish and Wildlife.
    
3. Monitoring the status and alarm conditions of video base-band equipment for Kentucky Educational Television. We monitor this equipment all across the state to ensure that the video feed we provide from the KET Production Center to all the KET transmitters throughout the state is of good quality. Additionally, we do the same for the video return paths from all the State Universities (KET Studios) to the Production Center for quality live broadcasts and for taping for later airing.
     
4. Diagnose troubles that customers may call in or that our Larse and Badger monitoring systems may display.
    
5. Properly interpret the problem description that the Public Safety or KET technician reports to the KEWS Alarm Center.
    
6. Using isolation trouble-shooting techniques to determine which tower site may be causing the problem.
    
7. Create the Remedy trouble ticket worded technically correct so the KEWS/GOT technician can understand the problem.
    
8. Dispatch the technician as timely as possible based on the importance of the problem, keeping in mind which agency is reporting the problem and what are the agencys safety needs.
    
9. Monitoring the status of tower lights and if we have a tower light outage we mustimmediately report it to Louisville Flight Control Center and the FAA in accordance with their regulations giving them latitude, longitude, the height of the tower above ground level and mean sea level. Close or extend the FAA report within 15 days.
    
10. Maintain logs on each tower site in accordance to FAA regulations.
     
11. Maintain daily logs of any site entry by any state agency technician.
     
12. Immediately request a state policeman to dispatch to a tower site if there is a door open alarm for which there is no report of site entry to the Alarm Center.

Note: In order to properly diagnose KEWS troubles, the person on duty has to know how each customers equipment works through the KEWS network via it be 2-way radios, radar data, rain gauge data, KET video, remote control, or earthquake data. You must possess a good understanding of the KEWS backbone, the topology of the network, high pass and low pass circuits, video switch points, loop protection switches on the backbone, KET remote control paths, KEWS alarm conditions, and the needs of our customers.