Issue Archive: June/July 2008

A Holistic Approach to Interoperability

We need interoperability. This is the new chorus sung by public safety professionals from coast to coast. Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 sent a resounding message across the nation-federal, state and local public safety agencies must be able to communicate with one another in order to respond effectively to large-scale disasters. Our current public safety communications infrastructure, built over time as a patchwork of independent systems, makes this such communications extremely difficult. Tragic incidents accompanied by blazing headlines have highlighted all that can go wrong as a result.

But do we fully understand what we are seeking? When most public safety professionals hear the term "interoperability," only radio interoperability immediately comes to mind. The term conjures awful memories of September 11th when firemen weren't able to hear radio warnings from NYPD that the towers were about to collapse. Since then, our industry has poured its time, energy and dollars into making radio communications interoperable, believing this is the answer to our problems. However, radio is not the end game-it is just one piece of a much larger puzzle.

It is time to take a step back and look at interoperability more holistically.  As our industry moves into the era of Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1), new communication technologies-such as text messaging or video phones or automatic crash notification-enter our world. Like radio, these too are components or sub-systems of a larger public safety organism. If we only focus on making radio interoperable, we will soon encounter the same operational collaborative challenges with these other sub-systems.

We must broaden our perspective. We need to assess which NG 9-1-1 sub-systems could and should be interoperable. Rather than having telecommunicators verbally relay computer-aided dispatch (CAD) incident data from one PSAP to another, which is a cumbersome and slow process, wouldn't it be faster and more efficient to have data shared electronically between the CAD systems used by the involved public safety answering points (PSAPs)? What if the PSAPs could share crash data with hospitals? What if FEMA could automatically gather information from local emergency operations centers?  These are the questions that public safety professionals must be asking to ensure maximum interconnectivity and safety.

The "C4 Solution" to Interoperability
The best way to view these NG 9-1-1 sub-systems is as part of a larger environment called "C4"-Command, Control, Communications and Computing. C4 is a technically advanced and tightly integrated public safety environment that connects disparate sub-systems across a common IP network. The IP infrastructure is the heart of C4 and the future of public safety.

In a C4 environment, a single, consolidated user interface (UI) would be employed to control multiple sub-systems. These could include Project 25 radio systems, NG 9-1-1 equipment (call processing (CTI), management information systems (MIS), graphical information systems (GIS), text messaging, emergency notification systems (ENS), CAD, analytics, etc.), video and audio recorders as well as sensor systems such as telematics or perimeter control. No matter the agency or jurisdiction, these sub-systems could communicate with each other and share critical information across the IP network.

Rather than having just one interoperable component-radio-C4 allows the entire system and each of the sub-systems to intercommunicate.  The potential benefits of this total interoperability solution are tremendous. First, it would reduce the need for hardware. Individual workstations controlling different applications are common today.
With C4, they would be a thing of the past and ultimately help save unnecessary costs.

Furthermore, by consolidating hardware, efficiency would be greatly improved as telecommunicators would only need to interact with a single intelligent workstation and ultimately a single, consolidated C4 UI.  Simply put, personnel would be able to do their jobs more quickly and easily in this environment.

Most importantly, C4 would strengthen operational capabilities. By having multiple systems automatically relay data to each other, this will provide superior incident management capabilities exhibited in the following ways:
" Immediately Actionable Data Display-In C4, data related to an incident can be collected from any source or sub-system whether it's video, audio or text. The consolidated UI will run the data through a rules engine so that it is pre-interpreted for relevance and intelligently displayed in an immediately actionable format for the telecommunicator. With more sources providing data to today's PSAPs, it is critical that we automate this process since receiving and entering information manually would dramatically slow down the entire operation.
" Situational Awareness-By collecting data from multiple sources and displaying the information in an intelligent format, PSAPs have a 360-degree view of an incident. The display of information in this format provides true situational awareness which allows public safety personnel to respond more effectively.
" Interoperability and Collaboration-Incident information and awareness can be             shared with all incident participants-across agencies and jurisdictions-via the  common
" IP infrastructure. Collaboration is possible with anyone who has network connectivity regardless of their location.
" Common Operating Picture (COP)-Collaborative data sharing creates a COP among users, essentially enabling different groups to work off the same page. For instance, two different incident managers inside two different organizations can work together without being in the same environment.
" Quality of Command (QoC)-COP promotes more accurate and timely decision making, better known as Quality of Command (QoC). Incident management is only as strong as the decisions being made from the top. This approach provides leaders the best possible environment to manage the situation at hand. 

Creating a C4 environment will not happen overnight. We are now seeing our industry migrate towards NG9-1-1 IP-based technologies.  As we move in this direction and attempt to answer the riddle of interoperability, we must make sure that we are headed down the right path.

Complete Interoperability
Interoperable radio is one important aspect to a bigger picture that includes a range of new technologies. We need complete interoperability where unique systems and sub-systems-from radio to video to text messaging-and users-from local to state to federal-can rapidly and effectively communicate. As an industry, C4 is where our sights should be set.  By implementing the C4 environment, we have taken a significant step toward complete interoperability and, in the long run, given our public safety professionals a better chance to succeed. The aforementioned advantages combine to improve total operational effectiveness for all of our public safety entities. In the end, C4 would help us achieve our industry's ultimate goal: to fully protect the safety of field personnel and the public.

Jeff Wittek is Vice President of Corporate Business Development at PlantCML
(Temecula, CA) and is a seasoned executive with more than 18 years of public safety experience.  PlantCML has led the industry in providing mission-critical 9-1-1 emergency response and systems management solutions for over 35 years. He can be reached at (951) 719-2147 or via e-mail at jwittek@plantcml.com. For more information, visit www.plantcml.com.