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Perspective
Expect the unexpected
in public-safety interoperability
By Donny Jackson
April 19, 2006
Prior to Hurricane Katrina, many lauded the city of New Orleans
for its
public-safety communications interoperability, but the actual lack of
interoperability in the aftermath of last year's storm has become a
central point of criticism during the last eight months.
In reality, it's not fair to judge whether the city's interoperability
plans would have worked in the immediate wake of the storm because any
hope of success was undermined by the general failure of the city's
primary system. Interoperability is irrelevant if basic operability is
not a given.
The root of the problem was the failure to supply power to the key base
station perched hundreds of feet above the floodwaters that foiled most
of the other communications systems in New Orleans. Flying debris
punctured the backup generator--needed during the citywide power
outage--leaving the base station powerless for days and first
responders
without a crucial communications lifeline.
Since then, officials have focused on solutions that will let emergency
responders communicate despite unforeseen incidents such as this. Of
course, there is no way to plan for everything, but those in charge of
the Alaska Land Mobile Radio (ALMR) project have taken some notable
steps with the system's transportable communications centers.
Built by Motorola subcontractor North Slope Telecom, the
transportable solutions consist of four modules that each
are 20
feet long, nine feet high and nine feet wide. There are four
different modules--one
for communications gear, one that features a 55-foot tower and a
three-day power supply, one with dispatch gear and one that provides a
satellite broadband link, said Jim Peterson, North Slope Telecom's
senior project manager.
The modules are designed to be interchangeable, so only those modules
needed in a given situation need to be deployed, Peterson said.
Depending on the configuration, the transportable solution offers a
self-sustaining communications center that can take advantage of myriad
communications media--LMR, copper phone wires, gigabit Ethernet,
microwave backhaul and satellite links--and a MotoBridge solution to
tie
them together for interoperable communications.
While certainly impressive, the radio capabilities of the ALMR
transportable communications centers are not unique; other mobile
solutions have similar features. But those alternatives require decent
roadways upon which to travel to their deployment site.
"One of the issues that Katrina demonstrated is that the fact that you
have this wonderful communications van doesn't do you much good when
the
bridges have fallen down and the roads are flooded out, so you can't
get
into an area," Peterson said. "We're very familiar with that in Alaska,
because it happens all the time--we call it winter."
With that in mind, North Slope Telecom designed into each module as
much
flexibility as possible in terms of transporting them to sites that can
be located on the top of a snowy mountain or in the middle of remote
swamp, Peterson said.
Certainly the modules can travel via roadways or on a ferry, but the
key
advantage of the ALMR system is that it can be transported
via the air. Each module is designed to meet military standards for
transport via a cargo plane or helicopter.
Previous temporary communications systems also could be transported by
plane, but doing so required hours to load the disparate parts in a
secure manner using a web of cables, said Bill Laxson, North Slope
Telecom's president and founder.
"With the system they had before, they flew with it once and said,
'Never again,'" Laxson said.
By meeting military specifications for air transportation, a
13,500-pound ALMR transportable module can be locked onto the grid of a
military cargo plane in minutes, enabling the critical infrastructure
to
reach its destination as quickly as possible, Peterson said.
"It takes a little less than a half hour to get two modules locked down
into a C-130, and [once] locked down, the plane can fly," he said.
"We're not spending eight hours on the tarmac in the load process ...
or
eight hours in the unload process on the other end."
Certainly deploying a transportable package like the ALMR solution is
significantly more expensive than driving a communications van to a
site. But at a disaster site, money is not the issue; instead, it is
giving emergency responders the interoperable communications tools
needed to save lives as quickly as possible, regardless of the
unforeseen circumstances that may have arisen.
Hopefully, officials in charge of awarding interoperability grants will
take note of the ALMR transportable example and support funding of
similar self-contained solutions on at least a regional basis in the
future.
E-mail me at djackson@prismb2b.com.
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Feature
Tools designed to meet
new interoperability goals
By Donny Jackson
April 19, 2006
Planning still is a crucial component to forging interoperable
communications between first responders in times of emergencies, but
recent events have public-safety officials rethinking the paradigm to
include additional levels of flexibility...
(Click on the link above or scroll down for the full-length
feature)
Q&A
Talking
interoperability with SAFECOM's David Boyd
By Donny Jackson
April 19, 2006
David Boyd is the director of the Department of Homeland Security's
Office for Interoperability and Compatibility as well as the director
of
SAFECOM, a presidential initiative created to achieve interoperability
among all elements of the nation's public-safety and first-responder
community. Today, he discussed interoperability with MRT senior
writer Donny Jackson...
(Click on the link above or scroll down for the full-length Q&A)
Related Links
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Feature (Full-Length)
Tools
designed to meet new interoperability goals
By Donny Jackson
April 19, 2006
Planning still is a crucial component to forging interoperable
communications between first responders in times of emergencies, but
recent events have public-safety officials rethinking the paradigm to
include additional levels of flexibility.
"We have a new dimension after [Hurricane] Katrina," said Ron Haraseth,
director of automated frequency coordination for the Association of
Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO). "Whereas a lot of people
were putting in some relatively static interoperability solutions,
Katrina has forced people to ask, 'What happens if your entire
infrastructure disappears and you have to bring in interoperability on
the fly?' That's not an area that's been addressed very well until just
recently."
Fortunately, the tools for dealing with such situations continue to
improve.
One of the problems noted by Haraseth and other public-safety officials
is that one cornerstone interoperability solution--the ACU-1000 from
Raytheon JPS--requires a trained communications officer to deploy it in
an emergency situation, and even the best trained personnel cannot
deploy it in less than 30 minutes. As a result, the ACU-1000 often is
used only in the largest incidents that require a communications hub
for
several hours.
To address the need for quicker interoperability deployments by first
responders, Raytheon JPS is introducing the ACU-M, a smaller,
four-pound
version of the ACU-1000 that is designed to be portable and easy enough
to deploy that even untrained first responders can achieve
interoperable
links quickly at the scene, said Doug Hall, senior scientist at
Raytheon
JPS.
"It's one of those things where the very people who are out there
responding will be able to set this up and use it, if necessary," he
said.
With a splash-proof, smudge-proof exterior and buttons large enough to
be pushed by a user wearing gloves, the ACU-M features an intuitive
interface and does not need the additional computer hookup typically
required in an ACU-1000 deployment, Hall said.
"After you've hooked up your radios and cables, you can see the buttons
on the front panel," he said. "If you want to connect Radio 1 to Radio
2, you press the button for Radio 1 and the button for Radio 2, hit the
'Connect' button and you're done. You can be interoperating literally
in
minutes."
Alternatives include software start-up Codespear's
software-driven
interoperability solution for public safety, which also is designed for
quick
deployment by first responders. A unique component of the Codespear
system is the option that lets public-safety entities interoperate with
the general public via a system that distributes alerting messages
across a variety of communications platforms.
"[Subscribers] can even use time and day restrictions, like, 'Only hit
my
home phone at night, my cell phone during the day and my e-mail at
another time,'" said Glen Seaman, Codespear vice president of business
development and product strategy. "The failing of other alert systems
is
that, over 50% of the time, they get voice recorders. It doesn't do any
good if you're leaving voice messages on someone's recorder."
Of course, all the interoperability tools in the world are of little
use
when radios are out of their coverage areas or when normal coverage is
compromised because a base station is rendered inoperable. Typical
solutions have involved the use of satellite links--which have issues
related to latency and the portability of handsets for first
responders--and mobile base stations that are deployable only where
roadways are available.
A unique alternative is being offered by Arizona-based Space Data,
which deploys weather balloons carrying base stations into near
space--between 65,000 and 100,000 feet above the ground, where
atmospheric conditions are not a factor. The balloons gradually drift
across a given area, providing a wide swath of coverage--100 to 500
miles in diameter--at the frequency provided by the base station in the
weather balloon.
A Space Data base station can provide coverage for more than one
frequency, enabling interoperable communications independent of
terrestrial conditions affecting land-based communications
infrastructure and power, said Jerry Knoblach, Space Data co-founder,
Chairman and CEO. Space Data is testing such a system with the United
States Air Force, he said.
"The system that we're building for the military has the ability to fit
up to three different channel cards in it. So, you could fly a radio up
at 700 MHz and map that to VHF," Knoblach said. "If you show up at some
kind of natural-disaster emergency, and you've got to have people at
the
oil refinery ... at 900 MHz talking to the public-safety people at 800
MHz, you could fly a balloon that maps those two together.
However, Knoblach conceded that Space Data's solution has a limited
window of effectiveness.
"For early parts of the recovery effort, [our solution] would be a
great
thing. As the recovery effort moves along and people bring in
cellular-on-wheels towers, and the infrastructure gets more
established,
the ground-based stuff will have more capacity than we will."
Back to top
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Q&A (Full-Length)
Talking
interoperability with SAFECOM's David Boyd
By Donny Jackson
April 19, 2006
David Boyd is the director of the Department of Homeland Security's
Office for Interoperability and Compatibility as well as the director
of
SAFECOM, a presidential initiative created to achieve interoperability
among all elements of the nation's public-safety and first-responder
community. Today, he discussed interoperability with MRT senior
writer Donny Jackson.
Is interoperability a technological challenge, or is it more of a
people/funding issue?
Technology is the reason we have the [interoperability] problem, but
it's not the driver to the solution. The most important element of
interoperability today is primarily an organizational/human kind of
issue. It's not really a technology issue; the technology is out there
to tie systems together. The difficult part has to do with things like
governance and the creation of standard operating procedures.
What aspect is most challenging?
Governance is the real tough nut to crack because governance ultimately
is how people are going to share authority and responsibility over
communications systems. Bringing together disparate departments that
have their own communications systems--and like to control them pretty
tightly, to meet their own immediate needs--is often a very challenging
piece of the exercise.
However, public safety increasingly is recognizing [the need for
interoperability] and is doing a great deal more to address those
issues
across jurisdictions and across disciplines.
Are agreements between agencies enough to ensure
interoperability?
If you don't actually have your interoperability solution integrated
into what you do all the time, then not only will your officers not
know
how to use it--because they've never seen it--but they might not even
know where the equipment is stored.
For example, the day after 9/11, I got a call from a federal agency
that
said, "We desperately need to be able to interoperate and monitor
what's
happening in the national capitol region, and we have this patch device
we've had for about a year that will allow us to do that. Do you have
anybody who knows how to set it up?"
That's not the time to discover that you don't have anybody who knows
how to set it up.
Should interoperability be built from the local level, or is
leadership from the federal government necessary?
Our approach is that the federal government has a major responsibility
to provide the tools to build interoperability from the bottom up.
Why does it need to start from the bottom up? Because 90% of the
public-safety wireless infrastructure in the U.S. is owned, operated
and
maintained by localities, so they're the folks we have to start with.
Because they own it--and because they have the principle resources on
site when things occur--you have to bring them in as a critical
component of [tying] this together. The rational thing is to have them
drive it because they own the systems, they understand the issues, and
they're the primary responders.
Most Capitol Hill interoperability funding debates focus on the cost
of enabling equipment. Should money be earmarked for planning and
training?
In many cases, we end up funding the system and the equipment and
requiring that the money be committed to the purchase of the system,
without thinking first that we need to do the planning, we need to do
the design, and that we need to ensure that training is supported as
well.
You need to provide an opportunity to do the planning, so you can
design
a really effective system and not spend money before you plan--there is
something a little strange about the notion that you would build first
and plan later. And, like it or not, you have to think very seriously
about training. Training is not free; it's a resource that has to be
supported.
Remember that most grant programs call for in-kind support from the
localities, so the localities often provide that planning and training
as a way to help meet some of those in-kind requirements.
What does SAFECOM hope to learn from the interoperability survey
that
will be conducted later this spring?
In the next two or three weeks, we're going to initiate a baseline
survey of more than 20,000 chosen public-safety agencies of all kinds.
The kind of questions we'll be asking cover the gamut of the issues you
see on the [interoperability] continuum. We're not just interested in
what technology is being used--we also want to know how technology is
being implemented, what kinds of agreements are in place, whether those
agreements are multi-jurisdictional and to what degree statewide plans
have been developed.
When we're done, we believe this survey will provide the kind of data
we
need to determine how best to allocate resources to address
interoperability. Without this, we have been--in effect--flying blind
for years.
What kind of timeline do you have in mind?
We expect to have the initial data results sometime in mid- to late
summer. There will be a more detailed study ready probably in the fall.
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