Okaz/Saudi Gazette

DAMMAM — Minister of Interior Prince Abdulaziz bin Saud bin Naif inaugurated on Sunday the Unified Security Operations Center (911) in the Eastern Province through video conferencing.

The center, which is a unit of the National Center for Security Operations (NCSO) under the Ministry of Interior, is the third of its kind in the Kingdom after similar centers were opened earlier in the regions of Makkah and Riyadh.

The center aims to achieve quality of life through making available of an integrated communications system that ensures rapid response in all emergency cases. This is in accordance with a common operational concept that achieves coordination and integration among various security and service agencies.

The Unified Security Operations Center or 911 Center would serve 12 governorates in the Eastern Province in addition to the city of Dammam. It has unified the work of 29 operations rooms under one roof with the unified emergency number of 911.

The center is specialized in receiving all phone calls and emergency cases concerned with the following security authorities: Public Security, including Traffic, Special Forces for Road Security, Security Patrols and police patrols; Civil Defense, and the High Commission for Industrial Security. This is in accordance with the international standards that ensure the speedy response of field teams in directing communications and following them up on until completion of all the procedures in this regard. After receiving communications in different languages, the center deals with them, and relaying them to the relevant authorities with accuracy and high quality.

The center has also a number of partners such as Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs and Housing (Eastern Province Municipality), Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture, the Saudi Red Crescent Authority, the Saudi Electricity Company, and the National Water Company.

It is noteworthy that the Unified Security Operations Center is one of the most important initiatives implemented by the Ministry of Interior in cooperation with the Quality of Life Program, one of the programs of the Saudi Vision 2030.

The center acts as a subsidiary of the National Center for Security Operations (NCSO), which monitors the security situation in all regions of Saudi Arabia. The NCSO is coordinating with the security authorities and other relevant government bodies to deal with emergencies as required by the security situation.