Emergency services: Answering the call
You may not rely on them every day, but somebody does. Emergency services are a core part of government service offerings, and they're also home to some of the most specialised and mission-critical systems of any government.
For this emergency-services roundtable, GTR caught up with key players in the market to get their thoughts on challenges it faces, and to find out what they’re doing to help improve this critical service. Participants included Alex Stefan, national general manager for government, public safety and security with Telstra; Russell Watson, solutions marketing manager with Tait Communications; and Michael N’Guyen, general manager of government and public safety with Motorola. All three represent companies that are core suppliers to many emergency-services organisations, and regularly engage with emergency authorities across Australia and New Zealand.
GTR: What do you see as the most innovative emergency-services technology today?
Stefan: Police, fire, and ambulance services are highly mobile organisations, and technologies such as mobile broadband have really allowed them to innovate in relation to improving the productivity of their operations. For many years, for example, operational staff have had to write out forms in the field, then return to the station and upload the information. Today, they can do that on the fly, and it provides the first responders with significant productivity improvements.
Things like video streaming and applications are crucial – not just the pipe. Ultimately, it’s about what the users will put on the system to make their organisations more effective and efficient.
GTR: What organisations have been particularly proactive with mobile broadband?
Stefan: Broad cross sections of emergency services are proactively utilising mobile broadband. As an example, we’ve been working with the Western Australia Police who have developed a new generation of police vehicle. The West Australia police car automatically scans number plates of car that pass and can identified unlicensed and unregistered drivers. It also utilises video quite extensively, and in the future will allow dispatchers to see what first responders are seeing in the field in real time.
To be able to monitor in real time, thousands of vehicles, has been a significant innovation that the police have been able to pursue. Police in other jurisdictions are pursuing similar and complementary initiatives – and it really shows the innovation being led by the emergency services in delivering new capabilities. N'Guyen: Public safety can’t afford to ignore this capability because we can see how multimedia has transformed it. In saying that, it’s a double-edged sword. When you have too much information, you can’t be effective. So from a Motorola perspective, we’re trying to balance the two. The key is looking at how you turn data into operational, rich information so when it reaches the person on the ground, it has already been scrutinised. We need to consider factors such as how the person on the ground interacts with the vehicle, infrastructure, and networks that are available. That has always been the real challenge: you want the tools to talk to each other effectively so the officer doesn’t have to take his eyes off the situation and lose track of the activity.For example, in Victoria we manage the mobile data network – a dedicated, mission- critical network that allows dispatching for police, ambulance and so on. Police used to get their jobs issued by voice dispatching, but now it goes to a terminal in the car. Every dispatch that goes out is recorded and measured in terms of performance: we talk about milliseconds rather than minutes. People see the technology that public safety uses and think it’s just another type of IT, but those are the kinds of requirements for public safety.
GTR: Does the growing use of mobile broadband mean that traditional digital radio's days are numbered?
N'Guyen: Not at all. Voice communications still remains as a critical capability and a foundation of what emergency-services organisations do. Nothing beats verbal communications between command and control and a field team, and smooth communications makes them efficient and effective in the field.
Stefan: Radio will always have a vital role in emergency services. Radio is a mission-critical technology that is used for voice, and for narrowband data at 9.6Kbps. Mobile broadband really complements that technology set by bringing a high-bandwidth capacity and new capabilities to front line officers.
Watson: Many people will say that emergency services have mobile broadband and that will solve their data problems, and they see mobile broadband as a silver bullet that will allow them to have all the rich information they need, when and where they want it. But a number of challenges with LTE will prevent it from being a silver bullet; the cost of infrastructure, and time to roll out that infrastructure, are issues. We have areas where commercial LTE is unable or unlikely to go very quickly. Public safety’s contribution to carriers’ revenues is only around 0.1% – so they may find carriers are unable to fix coverage if it’s not commercially viable. That’s why we’re not seeing narrowband as the only solution, but conversely we’re not seeing broadband as the only solution.
Stefan: Mobile broadband networks will over time evolve to the same reliability as emergency services radio networks. Networks like Telstra’s Next-G network are today utilised by the emergency services for routine operations as well as major events. A major challenge for any wireless networks, either radio or mobile broadband, is avalanching which normally occurs during extreme events. In time, during these scenarios, Quality of Service (QoS) will provide assurance of services across mobile broadband networks for emergency services. A number of challenges with LTE will prevent it from being a silver bullet; the cost of infrastructure, and time to roll out that infrastructure, are issues. We have areas where commercial LTE is unable or unlikely to go very quickly. Public safety’s contribution to carriers’ revenues is only around 0.1% – so they may find carriers are unable to fix coverage if it’s not commercially viable. With the new generation of LTE networks, quality of service (QoS) is being built in as a standard. In February, we announced the first successful trial of our ability to prioritise information using QoS over our NextG network. Later this year, we will have further developments in our 3G and 4G networks – both for emergency services and other customers that have an interest in being able to prioritise over mobile broadband.
Watson: Sure, QoS can be used to manage the performance, but it’s still not an infinite pipe. As soon as you start to get too many people within a cell, or you get to the edge of a cell, you get to the edge and move outside it and you’re not getting the throughput quoted on the spec sheets.
N'Guyen: Mobile radio is the workhorse in public safety, and it’s designed for near- instantaneous communications; we’re talking about milliseconds. A data network won’t be able to replicate that kind of performance. And, because voice is critical and speed is of the essence, that requirement will always be there. But it’s important to remember the devices, too: we take ideas around what’s mission-critical, and apply that to how we design and deliver our solutions. For example, our devices have a hot standby mode where you can swap the battery and there’s no downtime at all. Downtime has an impact on the function, so we try to minimise that. This is also reflected in the interfaces, which have to be fit for purpose. You don’t want to have policemen having to scroll through ten menus to reach a function – and that has an occupational health and safety factor as well. Having the right data at your fingertips allows the person to be in total control, so he or she can make the necessary decisions. And, in emergency services, those can be life or death decisions.
Watson: The real question is how customers interact with all this information, what are the implications of that information they’re suddenly getting from an operational perspective, and can they interpret that information? We’ve heard stories of young guys relying so much on technology that they’re getting themselves into situations that older guys wouldn’t do. They assume that connectivity – but you can become so wedded to these electronic devices that simple things like the battery going flat can cause you to get lost. If they get information they wouldn’t normally get, what does that do to the command and control structure? Will C&C break down because people get more information than they would normally get? Are they going to be distracted? Or are they going to get themselves into situations they wouldn’t normally get into because they’re relying on technology? We’ve heard stories of young guys relying so much on technology that they’re getting themselves into situations that older guys wouldn’t do. They assume that connectivity – but you can become so wedded to these electronic devices that simple things like the battery going flat can cause you to get lost.
GTR: Good information is certainly critical. What other types of information management systems are helping public safety officers in the field?
N'Guyen: Operational insight is the combination of quick filtering, training, and the operational wisdom and insight applied to the content. There was an incident in the UK recently where officers were staking out a person of interest as he committed a crime, but the officer that was following him couldn’t identify the object in his hand. Having ready data, and marrying that with operational knowledge in command and control, is very important. Having a camera in a patrol car, for example, can be used to pan around and let the people in command and control see what’s around an area; if a threat is detected, such as a bunch of people hiding behind the vehicle, that can be communicated by radio to the officer.
N'Guyen: At Motorola we have tried to marry or integrate the person with the vehicle and the infrastructure. The vehicle is no longer the passenger: to carry a person from A to B, the vehicle becomes a mobile platform with strategic equipment to support the officer. Linked into the LTE and radio networks, it enables people to respond faster and more meaningfully. This means when the policeman or fireman goes into the field, he or she is no longer alone.
Watson: We are going to be able to bring large amounts of data and rich information into the field. The beauty of rich information is that it’s visible, and the problem with audible information is that once it’s said it’s gone. But if you’re forcing people to stop and look at things, you’re immediately affecting the ability of that person to perform. It’s important to remember that field officers don’t always have the time to be sitting there in the vehicle punching in reports while they talk. Notebooks in vehicles are a very useful user interface, but my experience is that their usefulness depends on where your agency is based. Staffing is often such that first responders go from job to job to job, and the only time they get to type reports is during the night. So you really need to understand the operating context, and where we really add value.
GTR: There has been robust discussion about whether part of the 700MHz 'digital dividend' frequency spectrum should be reserved for emergency services, or potentially whether next-generation services should go into the 800MHz or other spectrum. How do you see this discussion being resolved?
Stefan: There is a government committee reporting back to COAG later this year about Australia’s requirements around public safety mobile broadband. I suspect there will be a large alignment as to what’s happening in the Asia Pacific region. There are opportunities for looking at allocation of dedicated spectrum, and for augmentation using QoS and providing priority to emergency services over mobile broadband networks.
Emergency services will obviously still have their traditional radio networks, and there is a national plan to progress alignment around the 400MHz spectrum. I anticipate that will go very successfully for the emergency services.
N'Guyen: Remember when we talk about public safety broadband, usage is not the same as with consumer broadband. If there’s an incident – say an armed holdup – the officer will have video and it will be pushed upstream, not downstream. There is more uplink than downlink – and this is opposite to the way consumers use the network.
In the future, another thing will be the ability to push information sideways; if I’m working with someone in a team, it doesn’t make sense to push that information to the network and then pull it back down. It would make more sense to push it sideways to bypass the network.
GTR: Recent floods and bushfires have driven new usage of social media and other technologies, while Google is reportedly working on augmented-reality sunglasses that would literally put situational information in front of officers' eyes. Where do you see emergency-services innovation emerging over time?
Watson: The Google-styled glasses aren’t something we are actively playing with, but we’re aware of it. It’s clearly one way of getting clear, precise information to the person in the field – although I don’t think we know yet how those in the field would fully use that information, and how it would affect them operationally and from a safety point of view. But it looks very promising.
I don’t think P.25 is the perfect solution yet; for example, there’s a lot of work to be done to get interoperability down to the finest levels between vendors. Some of the things we will be looking at in the short to medium term will be location over narrowband. We’ve been doing it, but will be looking at developing a more extensive solution that allows agencies to be aware of where their officers are when they get into trouble.
We’ll also be looking at systems that have situational awareness and help manage information, based on how a public safety agency would want to have the ability to gather and manage a situation. There’s no point reinventing the wheel, but we’re looking to use our knowledge of public safety, and the systems that we manufacture and integrate, to add greater value.
Stefan: Innovation is occurring in many areas within the Emergency Services from community alerting through to front line service delivery. For example, in community alerting we now have the national Emergency Alert system, which allows the emergency services to send land line or mobile phone alerts to citzens. Emergency Alert sent out some 7 million SMS messages during the Queensland floods alone.
N'Guyen: Technology will definitely transform public safety to make it more efficient and effective. As public safety is asked to do more with less, technology gives it that multiplier effect. Cameras become your eyes and ears, and police forces can be used more surgically. But the thing to remember with video is that every second of recorded video requires a second of viewing. That’s why on most rollouts, we’re looking at adding smarts that help you categorise it, search based on time or location and so on.
For example, in the US we’re working on a system called the Gunshot Detecting System. If a camera measures the sound of a gunshot, it pans towards that area and starts capturing video of that situation; video is then related to command and control for analysis. Things that can be filtered or automated can help public safety be automated very quickly, and you then make the decision based on operational objectives – and can react accordingly.
Stefan: Over time, the cloud will be adopted by government entities – and information, after being considered from a security profile, will most probably be able to be put into a cloud- based environment so large volumes of data can be utilised as part of a cloud base.
But there will also be application of social media like Facebook and Twitter to keep communities aware of developments. You have two dimensions there: the first is engaging citizens using social media, and the second is being able to get the most contemporary information to the people making command and control decisions. It’s all about being able to ensure the safety of the community at the end of the day, and being able to inform people of what’s going on. – Interviews by David Braue
This roundtable originally ran in the April/May 2012 issue of GTR.
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