Interoperable Communications: Laying the Foundation for Cooperation

By Eddie Reyes

Emergencies don't recognize boundaries and when a crisis hits, agencies from all points on the compass come to the call for mutual aid. While some municipalities work very closely with their neighbors in the process of preparation and training (multi-agency drills, emergency preparedness plans, etc.), that collaboration sometimes is not as evident in the procurement of the technologies and equipment first responders have in hand when the call comes in. How can agencies use their technology to best collaborate? How can agencies work together to build a solid infrastructure on which their technologies can operate and through which all agencies can communicate?

Often, achieving cross-jurisdictional cooperation doesn't happen until a big disaster occurs. This was decidedly not the case in the recent Holocaust Museum shooting that occurred on June 10 or in the Metro crash in Washington, D.C., on June 22.

Because there was already a spirit and practice of cooperation between jurisdictions and agencies, first responders in that area were able to save lives.

Like many regions of the country, the National Capital Region (NCR) began working on cross-jurisdictional cooperation on January 13, 1982 during a major crisis — the horrific crash of Air Florida 90, a Boeing 737 airplane that plunged into the icy Potomac River after a record blizzard hit the NCR. Later that day, a Metro rail car derailed, causing another three fatalities and injuring many others.

As if both incidents were not enough, the road conditions in Washington, D.C., were extremely treacherous, making it very difficult for first responders from the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia to arrive and render aid. Up to this point, mutual aid had never been practiced on this scale; there was almost no cross-jurisdictional governance and there was no voice or data interoperability.

Recently, I was privileged to attend a monthly meeting of Police Chiefs in the NCR shortly after the Holocaust Museum and Metro rail incidents and what I heard validated what I truly believe are the three most critical components to cross-jurisdictional cooperation: governance, standards, and training. While each of these critical components merits an article all by itself, I will do my best to summarize why each is so important and why they will not work independently during any major event. You simply have to have all three in order to achieve effective mutual aid.

Governance
Governance begins when different municipalities meet on a regular basis and begin to focus on sound regional responses to complex issues such as public safety, transportation, and health concerns. In the National Capital Region, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments has been the catalyst for bringing the diverse governments (federal, state and local) and disciplines together since 1957.

Shortly after September 11th, the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) funding process thrust many municipalities into the governance, standards, and training game because the Federal government mandated cross-jurisdictional cooperation if the region had any hopes of receiving the millions of federal dollars. This almost ensures that agencies use their technology to work together to build a solid infrastructure on which their technologies can operate and through which all agencies can communicate. At a minimum, any region should consider joining or otherwise participating in the following governance committees:

• Police Chiefs Committee
• Fire Chiefs Committee
• Emergency Managers Committee
• Corrections Chiefs Committee

Each of these can then feed into subordinate subcommittees such as communications, intelligence, technology, training, special weapons, and weapons of mass destruction. Just as important as these committees are the Regional Emergency Support Function (R-ESF) Committees. The R-ESF Committees represent the fifteen support functional areas that may be needed during a regional emergency, and provide specific input on the regional capability of their respective R-ESFs. Any region embarking on a formalized governance structure will most likely focus on the following benchmarks:

• Identification of the resources required to fully implement sound regional responses
• Constant assessment of the progress being made by the region in implementing these responses
• Constant updates and recommendations to elected officials in the region regarding the additional resources needed to fully maintain this level of readiness

Standards
Why is it that the one component that makes the most sense is the most elusive? When a first responder travels across the country to assist in a natural or man-made disaster, the most important tool they are likely to carry is a cellular telephone or PDA, which will likely function in any incorporated municipality and can communicate with any person on another network.

Yet, if that same responder were to bring their two-way portable radio and/or laptop computer, they most likely will not be able to communicate with other first responders on the scene by voice or data. This is mostly because of the use of proprietary — and frustratingly incompatible — technology standards. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Office of Law Enforcement Standards (OLES) have been instrumental to public safety agencies in helping them make informed procurement, deployment, applications, operating, and training decisions, primarily by developing performance standards, measurement tools, operating procedures and equipment guidelines.

The best case would be that all government officials would really recognize the tremendous importance of standards before they purchased a stand-alone system that won’t work with other internal or external systems. Another best case would be if vendors would focus less attention on sales and more on interfacing with other disparate systems, but let's just say that the open, standards-based way of doing business isn't exactly their modus operandi, in many cases. We as public safety professionals can't really do anything about that, so let’s focus on what we CAN control.

After September 11th, public safety shortcomings vaulted to the forefront of public consciousness and policy-making among elected officials. This scrutiny exposed flaws in proprietary systems and raised many difficult questions of how to proceed, such as how do we focus better on public safety standards, how do we create better coordination among agencies and what is the best infrastructure. The answers to these questions are complicated by the fact that many jurisdictions are involved (politics, egos) and there are a variety of challenges to public safety. Some are technical, some financial, and some stem from human factors such as inadequate planning and lack of awareness.

New Technologies
Speaking of awareness and good news, have you heard of WiMAX (802.16) and LTE (Long Term Evolution)? They are cutting edge 4G technologies of the future — most current mobile wireless technologies out there today are 3G — destined to be used by public safety when released and are designed to move data rather than voice. I predict these will be the logical choice when public safety agencies consider upgrading their broadband capabilities.

While the good news is that both of these technologies are very exciting inspirations to public safety technologists because both are very robust IP-based mobile networks (streaming video at 60 MPH), the bad news is that they are already being developed with different standards and customers will have to choose between one or the other. APCO and other public safety groups have recently advocated that a National Broadband Solution be based on LTE — this is significant because that technology is rapidly also the standard that the global mobile industry is following.

And just as some people like Mac and others like Windows, I suspect there will be two very loyal followings. As I understand it, WiMAX tends to operate on a more open standard than LTE, yet, some predict that LTE will be the standard chosen by 80 percent of the carriers in the world.

The level of open standards would indicate to me that WiMAX equipment would be more commercially available off the shelf and, in theory, cheaper to buy. Besides, there is already a very small market of WiMAX available; while LTE is still being developed, with estimates that it will be ready for general availability by 2012.

Do you see why public safety needs more standards — not less? With more and more equipment, applications, and critical public safety operations being put on IP platforms, it is time to focus on building and upgrade mission-critical IP networks.

Training
Even if we could fill the standards gap for public safety technologies, the next challenge I see on the horizon is a more sincere dedication to training. Before the current financial crisis gripped the nation, I felt that training was already suffering. Our agency has always been very forward thinking and always gave training significant consideration. But as soon as the bubble burst, I noticed a significant decrease in the amount of training our personnel were receiving, especially if it involved travel.

Many agencies that deploy new equipment or technology or simply create a new policy and seldom train with it beyond the initial deployment. As with anything else, first responders will play like they practice and if they seldom practice (train), their performance may not be optimal during a critical incident. And just as standards are important to equipment and technologies, they are just as important to training. When I was at the regional chiefs' meeting I mentioned previously, a good part of the meeting was dedicated to talking about tactical training standards.

You have to be operable before you can be interoperable and the same applies to training standards. Your agency has to train its personnel to current standards, whether they are encountering an active shooter or deploying the latest mobile data network. After you feel confident that your organization is up to speed in a particular training standard, the next logical step is to begin training with your neighbor so that when different personnel from different agencies meet each other for the first time at a major event, they call each side of the building the same thing and count floors from only one direction.

I hope you agree that we live and work in a world where emergencies don’t recognize jurisdictional boundaries and when a disaster occurs in a region, public safety communities from all around will respond and converge to help out — that’s what we do!