control rooms


This CCTV security control room


provides operators with integrated access to radio systems, including connections to local police via their TETRA talkgroups


can, for example, book custody suites while on their way to the police station. “You can draw a parallel with other sectors”, he adds, “only


in this case the ‘middle office’ is the control room while the ‘back office’ holds all the data. Te problem is that often these systems have come from different vendors and run on different platforms and so we have to find ways of getting these to interact in more efficient ways.”


Sobriety returns Tis drive for greater efficiency and lower costs at a time of major technology change is hitting numerous countries around the world. Jeff Gillan, product business manager for Cassidian in North America comments, “Public safety services in this region are far more fragmented than, for example, in Europe and there are many additional challenges to do with funding, staffing and legal jurisdictional issues above and beyond the technology itself. “In the US alone there are effectively around 6500 control


centres ranging from very large urban ones to tiny ones in small rural areas and proposed changes in this environment raise issues to do with territorial rights and responsibilities. Tere are also staffing issues involved in terms of who is legally allowed to carry out certain tasks – such as reviewing CCTV evidence which may contain potentially traumatic images.” He also cautions strongly against applying technology for


technology’s sake without clearly understanding how it is going to be used – another lesson from the world of mainstream telecom. “While it’s true that we’ve quickly moving to a far more data-centric world, it’s essential to understand that these fashions can often move very quickly in a pendulum-like fashion. For example, a few years ago a lot was being talked about the need to support SMS in the emergency services environment; fortunately some sobriety has returned! People at the time forgot that SMS was a store-and-forward service which wasn’t suitable for real-time situations because messages could be delayed and there was no guarantee of delivery. “Interestingly,” Cassidian’s Gillan adds, “when we actually did some research amongst the youth market – supposedly the


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ones hungry to use this newish technology – we actually found that the vast majority preferred the reassurance and immediacy of talking to a human operator. Tere are, however, important roles for SMS in some situations, such as interacting with speech- or hearing-impaired callers, reverse notification that action is underway or in pushing important information out to communities. Some corporations are also using this technology to broadcast alerts to their staff in critical situations.”


Erosion of boundaries If SMS was the fashionable acronym then, then M2M (machine-to-machine) communications is the flavour of the year now. While the GSMA has its Embedded Devices programme, many other companies are focusing on the huge potential this approach has – such as Ericsson with its 50 Billion connected devices program and HP with its CeNSE project – Central Nervous System for Earth. While visions and hype naturally abound, it is already clear


to see that new types of sensors and the continued drive to add connectivity to all manner of things has the potential to change the emergency service environment. With cars increasingly being equipped with communications and smart monitoring equipment, capable of sending out alerts for example in the event of a crash, it’s easy to see how data coming from these sources could be integrated with road monitoring CCTV systems to quickly co-ordinate the kinds of multi-agency responses that are often needed in these situations. All, potentially, without anyone at the incident actually having to report an emergency in traditional ways. Te problems that the control centres of today and the


near future face are not new and have been faced – and are being resolved – by other industries. Te erosion of traditional boundaries, the need to manage ever higher levels of complexity in real time, the explosion in data and the drive to turn it into useful and actionable information plus a vital need to reduce operational costs – all these would be familiar to IT and communication strategists in many other sectors. Te difference is that public safety communications demands life-critical answers – not just mission-critical ones.


TE TRA TODAY Issue 6 2012


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