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Secure and reliable wireless communication between first responders and between first responders and their Emergency Control Centre is vital for the successful handling of any emergency situation, whichever service (Medical, Fire, Police or Civil Protection) is involved. The NARTUS project has therefore specifically focused on the communication requirements that impact on first responders. The current generic requirements identified in the EMTEL report: “Requirements for communication between authorities/organisations during emergencies”, are essentially the need for secure, bi-directional wireless voice communication, but with certain special features not available from the commercial telephone network, such as the flexible formation of talkgroups, broadcasting, fast call setup, the capability for team leaders to interrupt conversations, and direct-mode communication for cases where network service is either unavailable or disturbed due to the nature of the emergency/disaster. These requirements are satisfied to a large extent by the TETRA system, as evidenced by its popularity for PSC (in Europe and Asia) and recent large sales to Police forces in the UK and Germany (though some needed enhancements are raised by the BAPCO Survey). The equivalent system in the US is Project 25. Details of the TETRA services can be summarised as:
However, TETRA and Project 25 is not deployed everywhere, which means that the immediate missing requirement today is for interoperability, not only between different services, but also within the same service if different systems are in operation between regions. This situation has arisen due to the fact that the different emergency services in each region, in each country had historically much autonomy in the way they developed their networks and the terminal devices they purchased. Regarding the next generation of services for first responders, Project MESA and other working groups, research projects, fora, etc. (generally incorporating both European and US Public Safety representatives and standards organisations) have examined what would be possible if wireless broadband (shared, dynamically) capacity (at least 1.5 -> 2 Mbps) was available; i.e. if some of the technologies that have revolutionised the commercial transport of information (both wired and wireless) in recent years were applied in the PSC market. From the full list, the ones selected below are considered as being common to all emergency services:
The rationale behind many of these new services is that having access to more information at the scene of the emergency, rather than having to request and retrieve it from the Emergency Control Centres, will improve the decision-making process at the scene of a crisis. This does not imply that every first responder needs a broadband terminal, but rather that the commander of the mobile rescue team at the scene has the broadband capability inside a fire engine, police car or ambulance. Some new features can be deployed using the narrowband capabilities of the existing Private Mobile Radio (PMR) spectrum allocated for PSC. Examples are: exploiting the use of sensors in tunnels (or sent into tunnels) to detect temperature, air quality, traffic flow, or built into the clothing of firement (eg. location detection, health monitoring), and the electronic tagging of accident victims at the scene and informing the hospital of his/her condition during the ambulance journey. However, other solutions, such as the visualisation of current traffic congestion on the route to an incident, or enabling remote access to critical information resources such as building plans, satellite photographs, crime databases, etc., depend upon the incorporation of multimedia services that are not feasible over today’s PSC networks. For example, descriptions of potential new services from Project MESA assume bandwidths of at least 1.5 -> 2 Mbps, which would require network infrastructure such as 2.5/3G (EDGE, WCDMA), IEEE802.x (WLAN, WiMAX, LTE) or satellite. The technical and operational considerations of introducing any new network have to be taken very seriously. Several choices have to be made, not least among which is whether to stay with the current PMR systems, shift to a higher frequency band, or use new wireless technologies (or a combination of all of these). The decision on how the spectrum freed by the so-called “digital dividend” will be allocated is one factor in this process however, due to the low network utilisation factor, the allocation of a dedicated frequency band for PSC networks seems unlikely. The challenges of introducing any new network technology include:
If interoperability between first responders in different regions (even in the same service) is not going to become worse than it already is, it is important that any new deployments are well coordinated. It is intended that this document will encourage a (harmonised) approach to the introduction of new technologies, wherever they can be demonstrated to be beneficial and cost effective. The NARTUS project has also addressed generic user requirements through collecting a number of operational scenarios and test cases from various projects and initiatives. In ICT for risk management, a use case defines a scenario of the interaction of actors and a computer system. There are several possibilities to design a use case model (consisting of multiple use cases) with different levels of detail. Hence, scenarios should be defined in regard of the possible usage of the developed system in the concrete environments of user sites. There isn’t a general template for preparing an operational scenario based on the following characteristics: name, general characteristics, description, type of situation, operational environment, number of users, use of sensors, coverage area. The scenarios presented by the diverse projects are emphasizing on some of these characteristics while others are totally missing. The scenarios were selected based on user studies, and in accordance with the following criteria:
The scenarios collected are mostly focusing on the first objective of EU research in ICT for the environment. They are mostly covering preparedness, alert and response phases of the disaster management cycle. However, only a part of them is focused on the second objective for “self-organizing, self-healing, ad-hoc networking of sensors…” Through this work of collecting operational scenarios from diverse initiatives and projects in Europe, it appears that:
Moreover, criteria specific to the public safety communications should be addressed: service continuity, physical and power consumption of the communication terminals, cost of operation, performance and security of communication links (authentication, integrity), confidentiality, access control, mobility, interoperability, location detection, transfer of data (voice, video, etc.), devices security, etc. Not much emphasis is given in breakdown of communications and how this irregularity is taking care. Prevailing communication systems employed in existing scenarios need to be pointed out. For example, in case of a breakdown of the communication system, an alternative communication system has to be established as a backup system. One alternative is the use of satellite-based communication. Another way to establish backup communication is the use of radio frequency modems. If an open system, like the mentioned wireless systems, is used, care has to be taken to guarantee, that the information cannot be eavesdropped or intercepted. Also the identity of both sides has to be assured. The presented operational scenarios can be used by end users such as civil protections, fire brigades etc. for training purposes in general but also for increasing awareness in state-of-the-art communication technologies. They should also be used as references and basis for further work and discussions within the self-governed PSCE Forum, in order to develop a complete risk picture of Europe.
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