DECEMBER 23, 2005
(COMPUTERWORLD) -
Communications interoperability is a problem facing nearly all of the nation's
50,000 emergency response authorities that will take years to fix. But Wayne
County, Mich., has already launched a system to connect 42 different cities,
towns and jurisdictions over a common communications platform and is moving to
the next step to include more than 300 chemical plants.
The county, with a population of 2.2 million that includes
Detroit, began its journey to link different radios, cell phones, laptops and
data handhelds more than two years ago. For the past 18 months, it has been
adding functionality to software provided by Codespear LLC, said Mark Hammond,
deputy director of the county's Department of Homeland Security and Emergency
Management, in a recent interview.
The system provides both interoperability and alert
notification to business and residents, and will soon be expanded to take alerts
from the many chemical plants in the area, he said.
So far, the county has spent about $750,000 in grant funds on
the technology. It's money well-spent, considering how long the federal umbrella
effort known as Safecom is expected to take, Hammond said. "Compared to the
federal Safecom program, which will take $256 billion through 2017, this is
technology here now and gives us an interoperability fix now," he said.
"The Achilles' heel of emergency management is lack of
interoperability," Hammond said. Since the beginning of the use of radio
communications by police and fire and other first responders, hundreds of lives
and untold dollars in damage to property can be attributed to slow responses
because of communications problems, he said
But with the system in place today
in Wayne County, residents are already alerted on wire-line or cell phones about
coming tornadoes and other emergencies. Also, first responders have sent back
photos of a fire scene from their personal cell phones to be distributed to
various jurisdictions to help fire commanders decide whether to send more help,
Hammond said.
One especially useful part of the system is that Wayne County
can alert various jurisdictions quickly and securely when the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security raises its security threat rating, so that jurisdictions know
to lock doors and add guards to power plants and water supplies, Hammond said.
Before, the various jurisdictions were not always sure the change in the threat
rating was legitimate.
Similar capabilities will be possible for chemical plants in a
coming phase, he said. He estimated that there are 115 such plants in Wayne
County outside Detroit and more than 200 in Detroit.
Hammond is also using the system to operate videoconferences
with Wayne County's leaders.
Codespear's system is based on a common Internet Protocol
infrastructure, with a small radio-interface adapter at each emergency
management center or temporary location that is connected to various radios and
devices in use, Hammond and Codespear officials said. The adapter is only 1 by 4
by 6 inches in size and costs in the low thousands of dollars, about the cost of
a single 800-MHz ruggedized radio that is carried by an emergency responder,
said Gregg Rowland, vice president of marketing at Codespear. About 25 adapters
are being used in Wayne County.
Birmingham, Mich.-based Codespear also provides a PC-based
user interface based on its SmartMSG server that can be connected to the Global
Positioning System to locate units responding to an emergency.
Rowland said Codespear is probably
the first working interoperability system in the country, while several major
vendors such as Cisco Systems Inc. are only conducting or announcing trials.
The biggest difference between Codespear's system and Cisco's
IP Interoperability and Collaboration System (IPICS), announced in October, is
that Codespear's is primarily software, while Cisco's system relies on multiple
hardware and software components, said Sean Buckley, an analyst at Current
Analysis Inc in Sterling, Va. Other vendors in the market include traditional
radio companies such as Motorola Inc. and M/A-Com Inc. An interoperability
gateway is being developed by Raytheon JPS Communications, a subsidiary of
Raytheon Co. Also, Lucent Technologies Inc. announced a trial in Phoenix in
October with Aloha Partners LP.
In addition, Codespear faces traditional government systems
integrators, such as Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp., General
Dynamics Corp., Computer Sciences Corp. and Science Applications International
Corp., all which have indicated they will provide homeland security, public
safety-related initiatives, Buckley said.
With the government allocating the 4.9-GHz band for public
safety and with plans to allocate the upper part of the 700-MHz band, there will
be "plenty of opportunity" for interoperability vendors to bring out products,
Buckley said. "In the wake of events such as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, the
drive for communications interoperability for first responders is a market
that's on the move," Buckley added.
He said one vendor is not likely to dominate. As a start-up,
Codespear "lacks the resources" of a large vendor or integrator and will likely
need to partner with one for further growth, he added.
Hammond said Codespear's technology "was a clinker, way ahead
of its time," back in mid-2003 when he first saw the product at a trade show.
"But now the technology has caught up with the need, and it's the most dynamic
software program I've ever had," Hammond said.
