By Kyle S. Richardson, Public Affairs Specialist
Providing the first responder with instant access to critical information in the field in order to improve operations is necessary to position public safety into the next generation. However, in an era where society is becoming more reliant upon our handy mobile devices to conduct everything from making restaurant reservations to day-to-day business, often law enforcement officers, firefighters and emergency medical personnel lack these same resources. Portable technology capabilities are usually limited to voice communications utilizing a base station or a service radio – if the user has been issued a device. Responders regularly must be inside their department vehicle to receive any non-verbal essential data. This is just one of the practical constraints faced by public safety in today’s high-tech environment.
Public safety technologist Britt Kane, who provides applied solutions for first responders by leveraging readily available technology, noticed that the inaccessibility of field data was a limitation while working directly with first responders to improve their operations.
“The vehicle is a data rich fortress which can provide most of the information the first responder needs, yet nearly all operations require the user to be outside the vehicle, quite the contradiction in many ways,” Britt told FirstNet.
Ironically almost all responders already carry mobile smart devices – either personal or department issued – which can bridge this operational gap. However these smartphones and tablets are mostly used today for email or texting rather than any real-time rich data feed to public safety users. They also utilize commercial networks with known limitations.
Body cameras, license plate readers, fingerprint scanners, virtual maps, digital building plans, etc.; it seems obvious that these tools must be put into first responders’ hands. At the same time the tools need to have specifications that meet the unique needs of public safety and be designed for public safety first. “Military users have been deploying situational awareness solutions on mobile platforms for years to get critical information to individuals in the field – so why can’t we do the same for first responders,” said Britt.
That’s one of the main reasons the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO) created an Application Community – or APPComm – a destination for public safety apps. “Bringing public safety professionals and developers together has been our mission since launching AppComm,” said Mark Reddish, APCO’s Government Relations Associate – who is also a volunteer firefighter and public safety app enthusiast – in a previous blog post. APCO has done much work surrounding application security, development and marketing of apps, as well as provide guidance from public safety for developers – even inviting public safety professionals to serve as mentors at public safety-themed hackathons.
It’s a highly-concerted effort to make available previously inaccessible technology to those who protect and save lives and property each day. Having instant access to mission critical data – through the nationwide public safety broadband network (NPSBN) – will be increasingly paramount for public safety. “The challenge is making sure the quality of the data is always excellent and the data is easy to quickly digest for the user,” said Britt.
Research, development, and testing to advance public safety communications interoperability is constantly being improved upon with persistent effort by the FirstNet technology team (CTO) through the Public Safety Communications Research program (PSCR), assuring that first responders will have the very best available to them.
FirstNet’s Director of Applications, Mark Golaszewski is working along with Acting Chief Technology Officer Jeff Bratcher and the rest of the CTO team to affirm that mission-critical data capabilities are foremost for first responders on the NPSBN. “FirstNet will provide new services specifically to support public safety such as dynamic priority and pre-emption,” said Mark. “Leveraging these new network services helps to ensure FirstNet applications will be able to deliver mission-critical data capabilities during periods of extreme network usage or partial network degradation, which would not be possible over a commercial network.”
Visit AppComm to see public safety app reviews, browse apps, share your ideas for new apps and get involved in app-related discussions.
