You are in:
Roadshows to remember
The audience at the BAPCO roadshows will have left with plenty to think about.
A well balanced programme highlighted a number of important challenges that face
public safety communications officers over the coming months.
Lessons from Buncefield
First on the programme was Peter Kendall, Emergency Planning Officer for the Hertfordshire part of the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust, currently on secondment to the Ambulance Service Association.
Peter reported to the meeting on the outcomes of a multi-agency workshop which was convened four months after the Buncefield explosions and fire and which considered what would have happened, had the fire occurred during the working day.
As it happens, the Hertfordshire Resilience Forum Training Group, which plans and facilitates live multi-agency major incident exercises every two years, was planning just such an exercise at the site for May 2006 and was already in dialogue with the operators. Alas, this planning was overtaken by events.
It was at 06.02 hours on Sunday 11th December 2005 that the Bedford control room of the East of England Ambulance Service took the first of many 999 calls. Although the ambulance service quickly moved to major incident standby status, it never actually went to a major incident footing and in the event dealt with only nine patients. Fire & Rescue Services did not finally stand down until January 9th, but overall the event passed off without causing any significant injury to human life and, amazingly, there were no fatalities.
What would have happened had the time been 9.30 on the Monday morning? And how would have the carefully planned mutli-agency response worked?
Some 150 business were co-located on an industrial estate adjacent to the Buncefield depot and Peter Kendall suggests that potentially the number of people killed or seriously injured could have reached 2,500 to 3,000 within the first few hours. How would emergency services have coped with this scale of mass casualty incident?
These were the questions which the multi-agency workshop, designed and facilitated by the East of England Ambulance Service and attended by representatives of the emergency services and local authorities in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, set out to answer. Also at the workshop was an investigator from the HSE team which had been set up to inquire into the incident. Peter Kendall went through the main outcomes arising from the workshop and they made pretty alarming listening. Here are some of the key points that he highlighted:
• The 999 system would have been overloaded. If the public, desperate to get through would have continued to dial 999, the number of calls could have been magnified upwards over an extended period of time.
• It must be assumed that the mobile phone system would fail or become unavailable which means other systems of communications would be required.
• The nearest A&E departments would quickly be overwhelmed with self-presenting casualties, many with serious injuries arriving in cars – most of which will be queuing down the hospital access roads.
• It would be some time before ambulance crews started to leave the site with casualties. The first on the scene would be fully occupied managing and coordinating the emergency effort rather than providing patient care.
• Availability of ambulances – even with regional and national mutual aid, availability would be an issue. As Peter put it ‘the normal 999 call demand will not go stop because of these events. On the 7th July the ambulance service was not permitted to relax its response time standards’.
• The number of burns beds available would be quickly exhausted and intensive care units overwhelmed. Many hospitals have closed wards that could possibly be opened, but it is uncertain whether the equipment and staff would be available to resource them.
• Co-ordinating NHS resources, for instance air ambulances, would prove very difficult.
• Just-in-time supplies in terms of treatment packs etc, would be quickly exhausted creating a logistical nightmare.
And so it goes on, the workshop looking at every angle from what assistance could be offered by St John Ambulance crews and Red Cross, to the status of willing but unqualified helpers, the supply of temporary structures by Fire & Rescue Services, the need for reception centres and resilience mortuaries.
As Peter put it, “We had to think the unthinkable. In a mass casualty situation like this we would have to deliver healthcare in a way that is completely alien to most of us. It would require a battlefield culture – it would be very difficult and undoubtedly outside anyone’s experience.”
On the subject of communications, Peter said that Buncefield had exposed a number of issues. He explained that a growing number of ambulance services use Mobile Data Transmission (MDT) for communications between operational staff and the control room. “Under extreme circumstances, such as those we are proposing here, we believe that there would be a lot of voice communications and there is some evidence that with MDT, the techniques and protocols for voice radio transmission have been lost.” The evidence suggests that in such circumstances there were more “conversations” over the radio rather than a radio discipline. “This has suggested that we need to reincorporate the art of radio messaging into our training and I know of one police force which will be introducing MDT has been rethinking their training requirements on the basis of these findings.”
He added that there are also outstanding questions about how Airwave would operate under these conditions. “I am not sure that in a mass casualty incident, the number of Airwave sets available would be sufficient. Airwave has been used on exercises but we haven’t yet had to use the equipment in the ‘heat of battle’. I am not sure whether it will hold up and that means that we do need to have some back up. Bearing in mind all the difficulties around communications following the 7/7 attacks on London, I do think we would be better to err on the side of caution.”
Clearly a report such as this can only give a glimpse of what was a very detailed presentation. However, Peter is very happy to give a similar presentation to other relevant agencies or partners who are preparing their mass casualty incident plans. He recently facilitated a session at the Government Office for the East of England which has helped to inform the regional mass casualty planning assumptions.
The potential of cell broadcasting
One of the key points in Peter Kendall’s presentation was the assumption that in the event of a major incident, the mobile phone system would go down. Mark Wood, representing the Civil Alert Services Association International (CEASa) had the solution. Mark believes that cell broadcasting has huge potential to be used by public safety organisations as a way of communicating with the general public in an emergency.
Cell broadcasts use an existing function present in most cellular networks which allows a text message to be broadcast to any cellular phone in a given geographical area. Unlike SMS messaging, there is no need to know the telephone numbers of the phones so this makes cell broadcasting ideal for emergency notification when there is no way of knowing who is in the area covered by the emergency or their phone numbers.
The technology will work even if the phone network crashes provided the physical infrastructure is still in place. The base station streams the data and because mobile phones pick up the data passively it makes no difference whether you send a message to 50 people or 50 million. There is no signaling involved, or location finding, and it is impossible to overload the network.
There are practical issues to be addressed but Mark Wood made it clear that these are “political” rather than technical. Because users can turn off this facility, and would certainly do so if they perceived that it was being used to send them spam, it is important that the protocols governing who can send a message and the circumstances in which a message is sent, are tightly controlled.
Mark said that there is an urgent need for a harmonised channel identification scheme to make it a practical proposition for travelers and tourists. And he said that improvement to standards were needed to make sure phones give priority to emergency messages and give a distinct tone. These are challenges that need to be tackled at both national and international level.
One thing is certain, though. Cell broadcasting is on its way. EU Commissioner for Information, Viviane Reding, is on record as saying that the EC is investigating whether and how mobile networks could be used for early warning of the public of an imminent threat or disaster and she highlighted the need to ensure a harmonised implementation of cell broadcast cross the world’s GSM networks and phones.
In the US the mayor of the City of New York is proposing to test SMS texting and mobile broadcast systems in a side by side evaluation of both technologies. Incidentally the mayor is looking for a partner in the UK to take part in the trial. Holland has just finished a two-year evaluation of cell broadcasting and is now moving to the next stage.
In the UK, this technology falls within the remit of the Cabinet Office and a consultation exercise is expected in the not too distant future. Mark Wood fears that key public safety stakeholders largely do not know enough about cell broadcasting to respond. His message was simple. “You are going to be consulted and if you want to have this technology, you are going to have to fight for it.”
TEDS is on its way
TETRA Association Chair, Phil Godfrey, was on hand to update delegates on the rise and rise of TETRA. The number of reported contracts has now reached more than 1,400, double the number eighteen months ago, and not all manufacturers are reporting, so the real figure may be much higher.
Interestingly the fastest growing regions are now the Asia Pacific and the Middle East, and of the 95 countries worldwide which have adopted TETRA, 57 are now outside Europe. That said, the US remains a gaping hole on the map. However, Phil had good news to report on Germany where the government has finally issued a contract – this, he said, will influence Eastern European countries too. Some 48% of reported contracts are in the public safety sector.
Looking to the future, Phil said that it had been recognised some time ago that it would be important to ensure that TETRA remained relevant over the next decade. A special working group was formed to consider future needs and this has focussed on new codecs, air interface enhancements, range extension and high speed data.
The outcome of this work is TETRA Release 2 – the TEDS standard which provides a high speed data capability of up to 500 Kbit/s, a much needed improvement over the existing 28.8 Kbit/s. The TEDS standard was completed a year ago but there are currently no defined timescales for its availability.
However, Phil was able to report that the Norwegian government has awarded a contract that includes TEDS to Motorola which suggests, he said, that they are confident of their ability to deliver TEDS for Nodnett. And EADS were demonstrating TEDS technology at the TETRA World Congress in Madrid earlier this year.
TEDS enhances the existing standard and provides a variety of data rates. And why was this important? He explained that there are now a growing number of wideband technologies available, for instance GPRS/EDGE, 3G data services, WiFi and WiMax, but these public systems are provided by commercial organisations and can either be turned off or go down during major incidents. “They do not provide the guaranteed availability that the public safety sector needs.”
Project MESA will address these issues, said Phil. MESA is a joint initiative between ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) and APCO to develop a standard for deployable broadband systems for mission critical users. However, progress has been slow and the project is now being dominated by the public carrier sector so the advantages of private systems may be lost.
Another important project which is moving forward is ISI (Inter System Interface). Part of the TETRA standards suite, ISI has been published by ETSI and defines the technical interface between two radio networks. The specification was produced by a combined working group from the Belgian, Dutch and German security agencies in conjunction with Motorola and Nokia. Based on practical tests carried by multi-agency teams during a pilot project in Aachen, the specification details the communication technology needs based on the scenarios developed.
Pressure for the ISI is growing but the reality, said Phil, is that it is likely to be at least a year or so before the ISI hits the streets.
Phil finished his presentation by making clear that TETRA serves a much wider market. “This is not just about voice radio for the police,” he said. “TETRA is being used in a variety of applications including airports, mass transit systems, utilities, petro-chemical and many others. TETRA Release 2 will ensure that it serves these sectors for many years to come.”
Phil also took the opportunity of addressing an audience of key players in the public safety sector to encourage their support for the emergency services to be given their own spectrum for wideband data.
“The fact that emergency services will almost certainly want to use more and more data in the coming years means that they will be looking for web-based applications and broadband type capabilities. The analogue TV switch off will create a digital dividend. However, the current regulators, and this includes OFCOM, don’t seem to be interested in the needs of mobile users. There are some very powerful lobbyists out there and I get the impression that the government is more interested in auctioning off the spare spectrum than listening to those who need it most. Unless someone does something, UK public safety is going to miss the boat.”
Phil asked anyone with links back into government to raise this as a serious issue. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to secure some spectrum. I implore anyone who can lobby through their own channels to do so.”
