Critical infrastructure

The ability to communicate quickly and to share vital information among a network of emergency departments is fundamental to the effectiveness of our emergency services. Having that ability saves lives, a simple fact that has been demonstrated not only in trials or in the boardrooms of the technology vendors again and again in life or death situations, including the recent attacks in Madrid and London.

Jeppe Jepsen, Director of International Business relations, Networks and Enterprises, Motorola,
and Duncan Swan, Associate Director, Public Sector, Mason Communications, join EI to discuss how Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) is connecting our emergency services and in doing so creating a more secure future for Europe’s critical infrastructure.

What role do advanced communication solutions play in the emergency services today?

DS. The most important aspect is that they have the potential to save more lives; the lives of the public and those who work for the emergency services. The new generation of communications have been designed specifically for the emergency services, are generally being implemented to support multi-agency operation, and include unique features demanded by emergency service users.

In a life or death situation, speed of communication is critical. With the GSM/3G network it takes several seconds to set up a voice call, whereas the TETRA network connects a person out in the field with dispatch or their colleagues nearby in milliseconds, without needing to involve dispatch. Indeed, the handsets carried by the emergency service personnel can continue to support direct group communication, even if the infrastructure fails or is out-of-reach.

Technologies such as TETRA are being implemented within highly resilient networks that are designed to maintain communication, no matter what happens. Typically in the wake of major disasters, the GSM networks collapse under the weight of calls, whereas after the train bombings in Madrid on 11 March 2004, the emergency services praised TETRA for enabling them to react quickly and being available at all times while handling huge numbers of calls.

There is no room for complacency, however. As the London Assembly Report of the 7 July Review Committee stated, “the key to an effective response to a major or catastrophic incident is communication. This includes communication within and between emergency, health, transport and other services. It also includes effective communication with the individuals caught up in the incident, and the public at large”.

JJ. The role of the emergency services is essentially to go into unsafe territories. Advanced communications have the ability to make those situations safer and to better inform the emergency services. And, when an emergency responder is better informed and is safer at work, they are able to do their job better, smarter and ultimately to save more lives.

With advanced communication solutions, we have much better services and facilities at our fingertips. For example, we are able to determine the location of a firefighter inside a burning building and can dispatch assistance much more quickly when necessary. The same technology can also transmit infrared video from a smoke-filled room to a command post outside. This provides a platform for decision-making. Furthermore, with biometric and telemetry equipment, heart rates and body temperatures can be monitored and alerts sent to control rooms when responders are reaching critical stages.

How have these technologies evolved in recent years and how is it likely to develop in the future?

DS. Arguably the most dramatic change ushered in by technologies such as TETRA is the ability to deliver not only voice services, but data to emergency services personnel when and where they need it. A simple example is being able to interrogate a database to find out who owns a car in seconds. Another aspect is being able to fill forms on-screen, on the spot, on a PDA-type TETRA handset instead of having to return to the police station to do paperwork.

In future, the police will be able to receive images of people, from wanted criminals’ mug-shots and fingerprints to children who are missing. Fire services could receive information about a fire – the flammability of products inside or where internal doors are, for example – or could relay an injured person’s medical history to an ambulance crew.

At present, the data rates of TETRA are perceived as low, but the TETRA 2 standard is nearing completion and will help mitigate these concerns. The next stage will be to build the integration of applications with TETRA handsets as a key component of the converged communications infrastructure.

JJ. Emergency services have an increasingly complicated role to play in society. Up until now, the individual services have had their own dedicated communication networks, where they could talk effectively amongst themselves. In recent years, however, we have seen government radio networks being implemented to cater for all services, which allow them to work more effectively and enable the emergency workers to take full advantage of being connected to their colleagues in other departments. These shared networks provide a much better grade of service to the individual organisation and allow the emergency services to take a fresh look at how they interoperate at a practical level.

In the future we will see this linkage extend further still, from field operations to mobilising back office systems. This will not only enable better decision-making but better, more integrated information access and more efficient information management and administration. Just imagine a situation where a police officer wouldn’t have to go back to the office to file a report on a traffic accident or to access police databases on suspect history and profiles.

What do you see as the importance of open standards in the market?

DS. Open standards are essential. It has been well demonstrated that where proprietary technology is used, there is little or no competition, resulting in higher costs and stifled innovation.

A great example of how important open communication standards are is GSM for mobile phones, where high volumes and a competitive environment led to rapid advances in terminal size and functionality.

An open standard for radio communications should, wherever possible, work within a set spectrum band to maximise the benefits of scale and minimise development costs, thereby keeping the emergency services’ costs as low as possible. In TETRA’s case, competitive pressures on both infrastructure and terminals have kept prices low from the start and there has been a rapid evolution through several generations of terminal, with weight halved and capacity increased.

JJ. Open standards are typically linked to increased competition and lower prices. That is certainly important, but to me there is also another angle, which is the speed of innovation. The emergency services have never before had so much functionality, such good quality and so much choice. That is all down to the fact that the shared networks as mentioned earlier are all based on the open standard that is TETRA. In fact, we have seen consolidation in the industry whereby suppliers of proprietary systems have subsequently embraced the TETRA standard.

Is the technology easy to use or is an investment in training required in order to maximise on its potential?

DS. TETRA is easy to use and has the added benefit that handsets have been designed around the actual needs of users. For example, police forces requested a prominent emergency button, so they could establish communications and call for help easily. Indeed, this feature is a common requirement also for ambulance and fire crews.

Like many mobile phones, TETRA terminals support the sending of text messages, either free-form or pre-written, to ensure a user can easily report their status. Use of predictive text and stored templates can make the terminals intuitive to use and talkgroups stored in the terminal can be given meaningful names, making it easier to select the right group for communication. Also, the user can easily demand radio silence if and when appropriate.

The nature of a disciplined public safety organisation means that some training is needed to ensure that the end-users operate with the correct processes and procedures at all times. It has been reported that users have been most reluctant to hand their radios back after a trial because they’ve found them so useful.

JJ. A TETRA terminal is easy to use because it can be used in the same way as you would use any other radio in operation – simply push to talk. However, training is clearly essential to maximise the benefits and that training should be seen as an integral part of developments within an organisation.

What is driving changes in the technology – for example, changing requirements and pressures in the marketplace?

DS. The importance of the emergency services being able to communicate with each other is now well understood in the wake of terrorist attacks and other disasters. It has been highlighted by reports into tragedies including 9/11, the Madrid train bombings, the London Underground attacks last summer and events as long ago as the Hillsborough Disaster in the UK in 1989.

The Netherlands set up the first nationwide TETRA network, C2000, for the police, military police, fire and ambulance services in 2000, while Belgium followed with ASTRID. The British police forces already use Airwave, the national TETRA infrastructure, and the ambulance and fire services will be migrated to TETRA over the next few years. The contract process is also under way for Germany to use TETRA for all its emergency services.

JJ. The fact that the marketplace has embraced TETRA so strongly means that investments in technology are forthcoming. Motorola deliver fully IP-based TETRA networks, which gives an unprecedented level of resilience and robustness in a network. In fact, we’ve delivered the world’s largest IP-based network in O2 Airwave. Since 9/11, Madrid and London, those features have obviously become critical. Networks for public use are not designed to withstand the immense pressure of disaster situations.

What do you believe has had the biggest positive impact in this field in recent years? Can you provide any examples of success stories you have experienced, either in Europe or worldwide?

DS. Ricky Gray, Deputy Chief Constable of Strathclyde Police, has often spoken publicly about how TETRA proved to be a secure, flexible and reliable tool during the much publicised G8 summit in 2005. Not only did the police have to ensure the safety of eight world leaders with the added complication of a protest against developing world debt, but on 7 July, the London bombers struck, necessitating a fast reallocation of resources to support those emergency service users in London who shared the same national TETRA network.

TETRA is encrypted, which means communications are secure. This gives the police an advantage over the criminals. For example, Lancashire police officers in northwest England were bemused, if not delighted, to hear drug dealers complaining bitterly that their arrests were ‘unfair’. Previously they had been able to eavesdrop on the police’s analogue communications network, so they always knew when to disappear or get rid of evidence. Not any more.

TETRA also played a discreet but key role in the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004. Motorola only had a few months in which to put the infrastructure in place and ensure the emergency and security services could talk to each other throughout.

JJ. Data is really where the future is headed and that’s where Motorola is focusing. As an example, our large European R&D facilities have enabled us to bring out a TETRA PDA, which allows back office data to be used in the field – such as police officers interrogating their databases – and furthermore provides a reporting capability from the field to the back office systems.

Our 500-man R&D facility in Krakow, Poland, are deeply involved in developing Motorola’s TETRA portfolio and provides essential technological expertise in this field. Of course, our core portfolio is constantly being enhanced and we are seeing data speeds of up to 40 times higher than previously available.

Motorola have provided the UK with the largest TETRA system in the world – Airwave. Built under a public, private partnership, it is the largest in size and the number of users and is fully encrypted. The company has also provided the Netherlands, Slovenia, Serbia and Croatia with their nationwide fully encrypted TETRA networks and we are busy building the national networks in Austria and Portugal.

Where do you see the uncapped potential for Tetra – what needs to happen for us to realise its full potential?

DS. There are two additional areas where TETRA can realise its potential, the first being transportation. The features of fast call set up, duplex calling, data signalling and a robust codec mean that TETRA is suited to many transportation solutions. While GSM-R (for railway) is available for long distance train communications, there are many applications for metro, tram and bus communications where TETRA is a better fit. There are a number of systems installed already, both inside and outside Europe, and this will be a growth area.

The second area is utilities, including gas, electricity and oil. TETRA can be used for production and distribution activities. Distribution companies within Europe have been considering updating their networks, and understand that private networks, rather than public cellular infrastructure, protects them from communication failures during major incidents.

Certainly, oil companies in the Middle East are very interested in TETRA, and there could be a similar interest for the Eastern European oil producers. While historically, many such companies would install their own systems, companies can share TETRA networks as virtual users, reducing the investment required.

JJ. TETRA has the potential to be the ultimate tool for governments, where all services involved in public protection and disaster relief can cooperate most effectively. On a national scale, that involves more than the traditional blue light services; it also involves protection of critical infrastructures, such as the energy sector, water supply and mass transportation. On an international scale, TETRA enables help to/from neighbours in catastrophic events. When all actors use the same technology on the same frequency band, they can collaborate.

Let’s also not forget the potential for Tetra in other large public situations such as the Olympic Games.

What barriers or challenges exist for those that want to make use of Tetra? What specialist applications or new IT infrastructure is required?

DS. The principal challenge tends to be the availability of the radio frequencies. This situation varies from country to country and is not a problem for public safety organisations, so much as how they can affect other users. For instance, in the UK, it has been difficult to get spectrum outside the upper 800MHz band for TETRA, but TETRA equipment had been optimised for use in the lower 800MHz band to accommodate customers elsewhere.

TETRA also needs 25kHz channels, which in the low 400MHz bands and the 450-470MHz band may be difficult to acquire, since these bands have often been ‘re-farmed’ to 12.5kHz channels. There are no TETRA systems at VHF.

In the early stages of TETRA deployment, many vendors only offered large systems, but there is now a wider range of system infrastructure offerings to cater for all large and small deployments.

No new IT infrastructure should be necessary, but better or new back office applications such as Automatic Vehicle Location System, database access and general data applications, will allow better use of the system.

JJ. Implementing a national TETRA system requires agreement in the political world on future operational benefits within the emergency services. It will also take financial investments and sufficient will to make it happen.

Only too often, we have seen that the proponents of TETRA have found difficulty in getting it on the busy political agenda – until a disaster happens. It also represents a big step forward for the users. Many things change when you suddenly have a data terminal in your hand; you can do so many more things and more effectively.

 

Duncan Swan


Duncan Swan is an Associate Director with Mason Communications, an international telecoms consultancy specialising in technical, business and management consulting, design and implementation (part of the Analysys Mason Group).

Swan has extensive experience in the design, implementation and project management of telecommunication systems across a range of voice and data technologies. His experience has evolved from working primarily with radio communications, for both mobile and fixed applications, and associated technologies, gained from working in supplier and varied end-user environments.

Swan has over 20 years experience of radio systems engineering gained through working for Philips Communication Systems and, since 1995, for Mason Communications.