SERVING COLORADO EMERGENCY RESPONDERS
The Colorado Team Awareness Kit, or COTAK, is a location-based service designed to provide real-time data to emergency responders, enhancing situational awareness, team coordination, and safety. COTAK uses geographic information systems (GIS) intelligence to enable emergency responders to locate themselves, their team members, and other enrolled agency personnel in real-time. COTAK is available at no cost for all Colorado public safety agencies and is brought to you by the Center of Excellence for Advanced Technology Aerial Firefighting (CoE), a section of Colorado’s Division of Fire Prevention and Control (DFPC) within the Colorado Department of Public Safety (CDPS). The CoE runs the COTAK program.
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COTAK USERS
Users include law enforcement, firefighters, search and rescue, and other public safety agencies.
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ACTIVE AGENCIES
COTAK serves public safety agencies of varying sizes based in Colorado.
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COTAK CHANNELS
Channels are used to customize the information needs of agencies displayed on the COTAK application.
SEE HOW COTAK IS USED IN THE FIELD
Why COTAK?
COTAK HISTORY
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) originally created the Team Awareness Kit (TAK) software to help
military forces enhance their situational awareness on the battlefield. Since 2010, the DoD and other
federal government agencies have been continuously developing TAK. The core TAK apps are developed and
maintained by an intergovernmental group called the TAK Product Center, which also allows community members
to develop TAK plugins and integrations.
Since 2018, the Center of Excellence (CoE) has been testing the use of TAK with public safety agencies in
Colorado. The CoE conducted beta testing with over 75 Colorado public safety agencies, covering various
scenarios such as wildfires, search and rescue missions, large public festivals, and other public safety
incidents.
In 2022, the CoE received a directive (CRS 24-33.5-1228(2.5)(b)(V)) to develop an enterprise-scale server
and associated tools to enable first responders across the State to use TAK at an operational scale. This
new capability, known as COTAK, utilizes TAK apps developed by the U.S. Government and a website and server
managed by the State to connect first responders across Colorado. In August 2024, COTAK went live and was
made available to all Colorado public safety agencies free of charge. Today, COTAK has over 1,900 users and
more than 140 enrolled agencies utilizing COTAK to improve their team coordination, situational awareness, and
safety.
