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Tetra’s next step: a European perspective
European Tetra networks have worked impeccably for more than 10 years but the focus is now turning towards the poor impact that these networks have had when it comes to cooperation between emergency professionals, writes Anders Mathiasen.
At the start of Tetra standardization by ETSI in 1988 the goal was primarily to replace old and low capacity analogue radio systems, and although that is now been achieved and different emergency personnel can communicate, actual collaboration between control rooms is still lacking.
Naturally, organisational issues play a role, but cooperation has also been hindered by the fact that most control rooms are planned as individual IT solutions focussing on individual organisations’ needs, with poor capacity for control room cooperation. On the technical side, the main reasons include closed proprietary systems not designed for cooperation between several vendors. Most European preparedness organisations have been faced with a basic choice.
One alternative is the one-fits-all system for all emergency organisations. This ensures cooperation and sharing of data but has the drawback that all players – independent of their specific needs – are forced onto a system which in the end has a major impact on resource utilisation due to the fact that it is not optimised for specific needs.
The other alternative has been to allow each organisation to select a system that is optimised for their specific needs, but which does not allow either vertical or horizontal integration. However, political pressure in favour of a state of both national and regional preparedness, and which works in daily operations and major emergencies, is increasing.
Around Europe there is a political will to solve these organisational challenges and in Denmark a contract has been awarded for a national control room infrastructure and integration, which solves the technical challenges. Referred to as “The Danish Model”, it defines a secure high-speed data backbone network and a disaster tolerant central server site for storing of critical data such as resource positions, status and task data. This ensures a common data structure across all organisations, but allowing individual applications that support the needs of the individual organisation as well.
The future
The three keywords describing future control rooms are flexibility, reliability and security.
Flexibility is a key word for future control room solutions, both in terms of upgrading with new, customised functionality, and in terms of following future changes in organisation/operational responsibilities (as well as cooperation requirements).
Many preparedness organisations have experienced investments in proprietary, closed systems that have bound them to the supplier. Minor additions to the systems have often been costly and difficult to implement. In many cases, the outcome has been a decision not to upgrade, and hence not to utilise the system optimally. And what’s worse, not utilising own resources optimally in daily operations. Experiences across Europe show that if the system cannot be optimised, the result can be up to 50 per cent higher resource requirements for day-to-day operations.
Open, flexible and scalable control room solutions that support future changes in organisational setup are key in the future. Control rooms will be merged and split, new control rooms will be established and organisational responsibilities will change, leading to a requirement for dynamically changing control room network and functionality. This can only be ensured by implementing an independent control room infrastructure that has been designed for open integration and with open standards.
As a consequence, the dominant future control room integrators will be medium-sized companies that are large enough to ensure stability and future support, and yet small enough to provide the flexibility needed in the changing environment. Next are reliability and security. Systems that are normally considered good enough for local, district or regional rollouts fall short when the issue is about national security in the context of terrorism.
As all communications and IT solutions will in the future have to be at “secure communication” level, companies accustomed to working to defence standards will be predominant in the future. Due to the rising requirements for reliability and security, future key players will be defence companies who have a history of supplying mission critical solutions for national security and who base their control room solutions on secure and reliable technology arising from defence applications.
New types of organisations will be integrated into the preparedness cycle, and armed forces and homeland security organizations will have to work together.
The Danish model
Denmark has chosen to keep abreast with developments by integrating all national preparedness organisations in one move. This means that besides blue light emergency services, other sectors such hospitals, homecare, defence and national crisis staff can quickly take part in an operation (depending on the nature and size of the incident).
Before the rollout of this new system began, Denmark was covered by more than 100 disparate analogue radio systems independently procured by each organisation. This meant that during larger incidents, an on-site commander had to carry up to five different radios to coordinate all the different personnel. The consequences were seen in 2005 when a fireworks factory situated in the city of Seest exploded. The commander had severe problems with coordinating the deployed fire services’ efforts, because they were unable to communicate on their radios and had to rely on conventional mobile phones on a network that was heavily overloaded by worried civilians.
The Danish Model, called SINE (an integration of the Tetra system and a common control room infrastructure) is based on the principle of having an integration and infrastructure supplier supplying an open system allowing all parties to work together, all part of the same national preparedness family, and sharing data, positions and activities as required. But, at the same time, allowing each preparedness actor and local actors to have a control room functionality optimised for their daily operations.
The Danish Model as supplied by the largest Danish defence and security company Terma A/S for the control room- and Motorola for the Tetra part, is based on an open, secure and reliable control room infrastructure, which allows each Danish national preparedness organisation the ability to share the necessary data horizontally and vertically, both in daily operations and during large disasters. But at the same time, the flexibility in choice of functionality is high.
Control room infrastructure and parts of the control room functionality have been acquired centrally, and special functionality is acquired by the local authorities directly.
Horizontal and vertical integration down the line
The need for horizontal and vertical integration – as is known from the defence sector – has been commonly identified after years of experience with existing control rooms. Ideally an open control room infrastructure should be implemented as part of an initial implementation. However, adding an open infrastructure to existing control rooms would only be feasible if the infrastructure was designed for open integration. The challenge here is not so much technical as commercial: existing control room suppliers could be reluctant to integrate with an infrastructure supplier to protect their business.
For more information about the Danish model, visit: www.sikkerhedsnet.dk (official website, in Danish).
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Anders Mathiasen is 31 years old and lives in Copenhagen. He has recently finished a Master in Business Engineering degree focussing on future trends and market developments in PSE Command and Control systems.
