Lake County 911 in Indiana has turned to an artificial intelligence system to answer non-emergency calls, as the dispatch center serving 44 police, fire and EMS agencies across the county grapples with a staffing shortage that officials describe as critical. The AI assistant, named AVA, has taken more than 444,000 calls so far this year, including over 35,000 non-emergency calls in just the last six months.
A Second-Largest Center Turns to Automation
AVA, which stands for Automated Voice Assistant, was built by the Seattle-based startup Aurelian to handle routine calls so human call-takers and dispatchers can focus on situations where seconds matter, according to CBS News Chicago. Lake County 911 is the second-largest county dispatch facility in Indiana, serving more than 460,000 residents with a staff of roughly 130 personnel, according to the National Emergency Number Association. The county consolidated its municipal dispatch functions into a single countywide system to streamline public safety communications, per the same source.
Mark Swiderski, executive director at Lake County 911, said 911 centers need to do more with less, per the station's report. He added that it has become challenging to attract applicants to the emergency communications career, and that emergency communications centers nationwide face a critical staffing shortage. Swiderski said AVA can provide timely assistance when a caller needs help but not necessarily a human responder, and that the tool succeeds if it allows the center to answer a call one ring sooner.
From Salon Scheduling to 911 Dispatch
Aurelian created AVA. Its founders, University of Chicago graduates Max Keenan and James Liu, started Needl as a personal file-search product in 2022 and explored salon-booking automation in 2023, according to GeekWire. The pair later pivoted to emergency call automation; GeekWire reports that a salon owner probably waited 30 or 40 minutes on a municipal non-emergency line, then hung up and called 911. Aurelian officially launched its public safety platform in May 2024 and later raised $14 million in Series A funding in August 2025, led by New Enterprise Associates with participation from Y Combinator and FUSE, according to Business Wire.
Max Keenan, Aurelian's CEO and co-founder, said 70% of calls handled by the average 911 center are not actually 911 calls, per CBS News Chicago. Aurelian now serves more than 60 agencies across the country representing more than 15 million residents, the company says. Across those agencies, the AI system automates an average of 74% of non-emergency calls and saves each dispatcher roughly three hours per day, fielding voice, text and chat in over 35 languages, according to Business Wire's reporting on the company's funding round.
Handling Hundreds of Calls at Once
AVA can handle dozens of people simultaneously, and during training the system handled as many as 300 calls at once, per CBS News Chicago. Swiderski said AVA provides availability to residents when they need assistance, but stressed that the tool is not taking dispatch jobs at his location. Lake County 911 has a staff member checking AVA's work and is exploring other ways to incorporate the assistant into its workflow, the station reports.
Lake County is not the only Midwestern dispatch center leaning on Aurelian's technology. Hoodline previously reported that the Kalamazoo County Consolidated Dispatch Authority in Michigan deployed AVA in December 2024 to process nearly 260,000 non-emergency calls annually while operating with just 47 dispatchers out of 61 budgeted positions. Aurelian has since expanded beyond non-emergency call taking, launching an AI copilot called Cora in December 2025 that offers real-time transcription and procedural guidance to dispatchers during active 911 calls, with Snohomish County 911 in Washington state among the first agencies to deploy it, according to Business Wire.
A Nationwide Staffing Crisis
The push toward AI assistance reflects a staffing emergency playing out across the country. A national survey by NENA and Carbyne found that 82% of emergency call center respondents reported understaffing at their facilities, according to The Current. An IAED/NASNA survey put the average vacancy rate at about 25%. The outlet discusses stress, low pay and turnover among dispatchers. National performance standards from NENA require 90% of incoming 911 calls to be answered within 15 seconds and 95% within 20 seconds — benchmarks that severely understaffed centers struggle to maintain without offloading non-emergency volume.
Indiana's 911 centers are funded in part through a statewide monthly fee of $1.00 collected on wireless, landline and VoIP devices, administered by the 15-member Indiana Statewide 911 Board established in 2012, according to the Indiana Statewide 911 Board. The board, which operates under the Indiana State Treasurer's Office, distributes surcharge revenues to the state's 92 counties. Public safety organizations including NENA have also lobbied for federal passage of the 911 Saves Act, which would reclassify 911 telecommunicators from clerical workers to protective service first responders, as Wisconsin Watch reports — federal statistics currently classify dispatchers alongside office clerks and taxi dispatchers.
For now, Lake County 911 frames AVA as a supplement rather than a substitute for its human staff. Swiderski's measure of success is modest but concrete: getting a call answered one ring sooner, at a time when every agency in the county is counting on the center to keep up.
