Subject: Re: [Ieprep] Public Safety?

From: "Ken Diliberto" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 09:15:17 -0600

I worked for a City government for many years.  We had a backup operations center that could handle all of Police and Fire dispatch.  The potential problem was what if the phone system was down?  How would calls get to dispatch?  We had wireless data connections available to keep the dispatch system available.  But nothing for phone.

There are many cities in this area of central California that would be isolated from the phone system being down.  Is there something we can put add to address this problem with either existing voice wireless or new data wireless?  I think municipal governments could apply for grants to obtain the necessary equipment to make this happen.

Ken

>>> Fred Baker <[email-masked]> 03/28/02 11:30PM >>>
At 02:31 PM 3/28/2002, Gunn, Janet NE wrote:
>If public safety is in scope, land mobile radio interoperability (again, 
>specifically out of scope for GETS) is an important requirement.  During 
>the recovery efforts after 9/11, the the lack of interoperability between 
>the land mobile radio networks used by the various groups (Police, Fire, 
>Rescue, etc) from different jurisdictions was a major problem.  It seems 
>plausible that, if each of these systems had an interface to the Internet, 
>the Internet could provide the interoperability between the systems.

I'm in the market for some words...

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From: "Ken Diliberto" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 09:47:01 -0600

I worked for the City of Fresno.  I know they have radio links to some of the other local agencies but not to those who would come to help in a major disaster.

What it boils down to in many cases is politics.  A Sheriff or Chief of Police may feel they are giving up control or political power when allowing communications with other agencies.  If this is actual or just perception, I have no idea.

I think Fresno has a few shared radio channels so the mobile units can communicate, but that's about it.  What I'm thinking is if we include something in our document stating how interagency communications should be handled, the Feds may make grant money available to the local governments to purchase and install the stuff.  That is usually good grease for the wheels.

BTW,  you probably have accurate information based on my experience here.

Ken

>>> "Gunn, Janet NE" <[email-masked]> 03/29/02 11:27AM >>>
Ken,
As I understand it, the issue following 9/11 was when groups from other
jurisdictions arrived to help.  For instance, at the Pentagon, the local MD,
DC and VA groups had interoperable land mobile radio.  But when groups from
southern Virginia and "out of state" arrived to help, interoperability
became an issue.  

My information is at second or third hand, so I may be mistaken.

-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Diliberto [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Friday, March 29, 2002 10:19 AM
To: [email-masked] 
Subject: RE: [Ieprep] Public Safety?

The infrastructure already exists for public safety officers to communicate
with their command centers.  How about between agencies?  A dispatcher could
us IM for messaging between agencies.  They already do something like this
between mobile units.

Ken

>>> "Gunn, Janet NE" <[email-masked]> 03/29/02 10:02AM >>>
Yes, IM would be easier to set up.  And it would work for someone at a desk,
or in a stationary vehicle, or a passenger in a moving vehicle.  But I don't
think it would work well for the police officer driving down the road, or a
fireman in a darkened building. Voice (radio) works better in those cases.

I am not actively promoting this as an approach, just brainstorming the
known problems that MIGHT be addressed by Internet functionality.

[snip]

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From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 10:44:49 -0800

At 09:11 AM 3/29/2002, Nguyen, An wrote:
>I think the focus of this group is to get preferential treatments for 
>emergency traffic in a packet-based network during congestions.

That is the focus of some contributors to the discussion. My focus is to 
make sure that the Internet is useful for emergency services, which means
  - doing a gap analysis to make sure that SS7 services for emergency-
    related telephony are mirrored appropriately in SIP and etc, and
  - making sure that appropriate services are available for data as well.

Note the use of the word "appropriate". I tend to think that solutions 
should solve problems. "Preferential treatment for emergency traffic" is a 
solution; absent a problem for it to solve, I'm pretty skeptical of the 
proposal.

I noted earlier that Instant Messaging (an elastic Internet data 
application) worked pretty well without special accommodations in a recent 
large-scale crisis. Had it collapsed under the load, that would have been a 
"problem", and I might find myself calling for solutions, which might 
include preferential marking of messages or some such thing. But if there 
is no problem, it seems to me that we don't need to worry about solving it. 
We might instead note that it worked well and should be on the list of 
things emergency workers might consider using.

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From: "Ken Diliberto" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 11:09:16 -0600

I think the only requirements would be along the lines of security and guaranteed delivery.  These could be simple suggestions for future discussion or they could describe how to do it.  A Blackberry would be great if some security could be built in to protect messages from interception.  My concern is the Media, but I suppose protection from terrorists should be considered in such cases.

I'll see if I can get examples of these communications.

I can see a company like Motorola creating a new public safety radio with built-in IM capabilities.  Then adding the capability to the transmitters.

Ken

>>> Fred Baker <[email-masked]> 03/29/02 12:31PM >>>
At 07:18 AM 3/29/2002, Ken Diliberto wrote:
>A dispatcher could us IM for messaging between agencies.  They already do 
>something like this between mobile units.

yes; are there specific requirements here that we need to comment on, or 
does IM work as is?

On September 11, AOL distributed Blackberry-based IM devices to critical 
people working in New York on a "just use it for now and we'll ask long 
term questions after we get the people out and this mess cleaned up" basis 
- one of many companies who did such laudable things. I don't know how many 
Blackberries were distributed, I just know that it happened. From what I'm 
told, this helped in field communications.

What I note is that there were no special accommodations made in that 
service for emergency use. It was simply used as-is by emergency workers. 
There was probably some additional delay in message forwarding due to load, 
but I haven't heard anyone say that the service was materially impaired by 
that. That being the case, unless someone can tell me about a serious 
problem that happened with it, my first cut suggests that this is a service 
that works fine as is.

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 11:25:59 -0800

At 10:44 AM 3/29/2002, Gunn, Janet NE wrote:
>Would this be true if Blackberries were as ubiquitous as mobile phones?  I 
>just don't know.

Any problem with leaving it until we know?

---

From: "Gunn, Janet NE" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 14:42:33 -0500

No, not really.  But we don't want to get in the habit of thinking "X worked
well for 9/11, therfore it will always work well."  

Someone pointed out that the hospital system in NYC worked well, but that
was more because of the nature of the incident: so many were beyond the need
for hospital services.  But that does not, per se, mean the the hospital
system does not need to be improved.