Public-safety answering point

A public-safety answering point (PSAP), sometimes called "public-safety access point", is a call center responsible for answering calls to an emergency telephone number for police, firefighting, and ambulance services. Trained telephone operators are also usually responsible for dispatching these emergency services. Most PSAPs are now capable of caller location for landline calls, and many can handle mobile phone locations as well (sometimes referred to as phase II location), where the mobile phone company has a handset location system. Some can also use voice broadcasting, where outgoing voice mail can be sent to many phone numbers at once, in order to alert people to a local emergency such as a chemical spill.