By Lori Stone, FirstNet Region III Lead
FirstNet recently joined public safety agencies from the Virginia Beach/Hampton Roads metro area to discuss what FirstNet is, how the agencies currently use data, what their mobile broadband needs are and how FirstNet will benefit them in the future.
Virginia’s Hampton Roads Region is the 37th largest metropolitan area in the United States. With more than 1.7 million residents in 2014, the area includes the cities of Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, Poquoson, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Virginia Beach, and Williamsburg.
Nearly 50 personnel from 24 agencies joined the FirstNet meeting held at Tidewater Community College. Virginia Beach Fire Chief Steven Cover opened the meeting.
“We are looking at how we operate now with everything from voice calling to computer aided dispatch (CAD) interfacing and how we do business day-to-day on the street - how we get calls into our call center, get those calls dispatched and get units responding,” Chief Cover said. “We are trying to figure out what is the paradigm shift [with FirstNet] and what are the potentials. Obviously, better data for our responding agencies to deal with incidents.”
The City of Virginia Beach is the most populous municipality in the region, and within the Commonwealth of Virginia, with more than 450,000 residents. The city has a booming tourism industry, which brought in more than 13 million visitors in 2014. The beachfront hosts a number of large planned events throughout the year.
According to the participants, mobile data communication is mainly used for the CAD systems for both Fire/EMS services and law enforcement today. The systems currently run on commercial networks. Representatives from the City of Virginia Beach discussed how the CAD systems slow down when officers are dispatched to the beach during large events - to the point that personnel will have to return to the station to conduct business. FirstNet staff explained how having a dedicated public safety network will help ensure boots on the ground personnel have a connection when they need it, in addition to spurring unimagined innovations with apps and devices.
Another way FirstNet will help public safety is with coordinated responses by enabling first responders to share real-time information over one platform. The cities of Chesapeake, Virginia Beach and Norfolk already have a successful mutual aid agreement in place for dispatching fire services. In addition, the region faces a number of public safety challenges such as flooding with natural disasters like tropical storms and hurricanes. Coordination amongst public safety and other city agencies to prepare for, respond to and recover from natural disasters was a key topic of discussion.
The Virginia Beach Police Department also talked about the implementation of a new camera system on the oceanfront. Officers saw the benefit of being able to access and send this video footage via mobile broadband and urged FirstNet to consider the requirements for video in its planning process.
Participants were also interested in the ability of FirstNet to integrate with next-generation 911 (NG911). The Virginia Beach 911 call center already accepts text to 911. FirstNet explained that as NG911 is implemented, the FirstNet network will be the pipeline to send video, images, and location information from 911 to the first responders in the field. FirstNet will help make information sharing more efficient and change the way first responders do their jobs today.
The Virginia Beach metro meeting is just one of the many outreach engagements FirstNet is holding with metropolitan areas around the country. The goal of FirstNet’s Metro Leadership Engagements is to facilitate a conversation with FirstNet’s future customers, address questions and concerns, and bolster consultations between FirstNet and public safety stakeholders to date.
Are you interested in scheduling a Metro Leadership engagement? Please contact your FirstNet Regional Lead or email Consultation@firstnet.gov.
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