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Command performance
Northern Constabulary’s command and control infrastructure was recently put to the test when the north of Scotland region suffered from a short but intense period of strong winds, heavy rainfall and flooding that for many was the worst in living memory.
As flooding spread across the region Northern Constabulary acted quickly, declaring the situation a major incident and moving to Silver Command status, in which power and communications utilities providers, transportation companies, police, fire and ambulance, coastal rescue and local authority agencies communicate, setting up a unified major incident command centre.
As heavy flooding and high winds of up to 80mph swept through the north of Scotland schools had to be closed, thousands of people were left without water or power and citizens, including a number of elderly people had to be rescued from their flooded homes.
Northern Constabulary warned travellers not to venture into parts of the region due to the danger of falling trees - in total 40 fell, blocking major highways, cutting off minor roads and falling into houses. Train schedules were also severely disrupted as landslides washed away rail lines. Ferries were cancelled too.
Intergraph had recently integrated its I/CAD-centred communications and command & control systems to support twin-centre, one-stop virtual call handling for Northern's widespread, 30,455 kilometre policing region, which includes large areas of demanding terrain.
"We put the I/CAD Net Dispatcher module up on an overhead in the major incident room where representatives of all the agencies were gathered, as it monitors the live status of police units and would help to keep everyone informed, as we sometimes literally waded through a sea of incidents" explains Northern Constabulary Chief Inspector Paul Eddington, Area Co-ordinator for Ross, Cromarty & Skye Area Command, one of the areas in the Force worst affected. "The system gave us the support infrastructure that allowed us to respond to a Silver Command-level, major incident".
"We had a massive number of distress and other calls from the public, which I/CAD allowed us to load-balance across our two control centres, working as one" CI Eddington continues. "We also had the resilience we needed. If one of our centres had been knocked out by flooding, as at times seemed very likely we would have been able to switch seamlessly to our second centre, as the two effectively run as one".
Northern Constabulary's touch screen command and control environment automatically locates and routes incoming calls from the public to the next available call handling position in Northern's control centre in either Inverness or Dingwall, for optimum response. The position of both mobile and landline 999 calls is immediately plotted on the system's map using BT's EISEC service.
The virtual control room environment also provides business continuity as all primary systems are mirrored on both sites, enabling continuity of service if one site goes down.
The systems integration also incorporates an advanced interface to the digital Airwave radio service to better support officers scattered across Northern Constabulary's policing region, including an emergency button on every officer's radio terminal.
"We also had to manage many situations in which police officers and other agency professionals worked together in difficult circumstances, for example escorting members of the public from a danger area. The combination of our I/CAD command and control system and Airwave radio meant that we were able to locate and identify every officer in the field as they worked.
"All of which helped us to bring order out of chaos - with no loss of life" CI Eddington concludes.
