The vision of the SALUS consortium is to enable robust, reliable, and secure mobile broadband communication for a wide variety of PPDR applications, including the ability of inter-system, inter-agency and cross-border interoperability.
The SALUS consortium has defined three reference scenarios for PPDR agencies. These reference scenarios will be used to create use cases and requirements together with PPDR end-users. The same scenarios will also be used for Enterprise Architecture analysis, a modern methodology for selecting the best technology options to fit with the strategy of enterprise or government organisations, considering people, information, operations and technology. The economic and business case analysis will use the same reference scenarios to determine the market for each of the applications, and finally use cases will be shown to PPDR agencies on basis of the reference scenarios.
Below the three reference scenarios are described in detail with the status of today and the improvements offered by SALUS. The three scenarios are selected as they match the general and usual operational scenarios public safety organisations/PPDR have to deal with. On the one hand, the day-to-day routine jobs of police, fire and ambulance services (typically the traffic incident, etc.), secondly the pre-planned big events (larger in dimensions as the daily routine jobs), be it peaceful, like concerts, festivals, or sometimes critical, like football games or often critical, like announced demonstrations. Thirdly PPDR have to deal with unplanned, ad-hoc incidents, like natural or man-made (huge) disasters, e.g. earthquakes, floods, terrorist attacks, riots, etc. These three types of operational scenarios are also the basis of the study the German Ministry of Interior has produced (2010/11) to evaluate the amount of data to be transmitted and therefore the spectrum requirements for PPDR’s future wireless broadband networks.
City Security reference scenario
The reference scenario City security supports PPDR agencies responsible for day-to-day safety and security of citizens. Police officers are on patrol to provide service to the public, and have to react rapidly and decisively when incidents occur, together with fireman and paramedics wherever necessary. The control room is the heart of the operation, from which officers are dispatched to the scene, and information is gathered and distributed to all involved during the incident. City protection networks are relatively static with fixed base stations that provide the necessary radio coverage and capacity.
Today, operations rely on mission-critical Private Mobile Radio (PMR) systems, including TETRA and TETRAPOL, with good voice and limited data capabilities. Although video streaming, large document transfer and database access is possible by using commercial 3G services (where available), these services are not mission-critical and often overloaded during incidents while no dedicated capacity and no specific QoS mechanisms are available for PPDR agencies. Also the capacity for real-time positioning data (GPS) in PMR networks is limited, causing inaccurate reports on deployment capabilities of the mobile workforce.
SALUS significantly improves the communication toolset for PPDR agencies. First, dependable and secure mobile broadband services will be developed for video streaming, large document transfer and database access. Private networks and / or QoS enabled public networks will offer a significant higher Quality of Experience (QoE), especially during incidents. Secondly, typical PMR voice and data services will be made interoperable between legacy PMR and new mobile broadband networks; this enables enhanced functionalities that are important for time critical PPDR operations, and enables gradual migration of legacy toward next generation PPDR communication networks. Thirdly, new integration opportunities are created by using the all-IP architecture by enabling applications and adding sensor devices and ad-hoc network extensions, for example to provide biometric data of firemen. This results in a significant improvement of situation awareness, both in the command and control room and in the field.
Disaster Recovery reference scenario
This scenario focuses on PPDR agencies responsible for protecting people and property during large-scale natural or man-made disasters, like flooding, earthquakes and nuclear disasters. This scenario often results in failures of public operator networks or even resilient private PPDR networks. Effective coordination of rescue work is critical to protect additional loss of lives and property, requiring fast deployable communication systems with local control rooms and communication links over satellite. Except for rescue workers, the military, police, fire brigades and paramedic teams are often involved in disaster recovery, requiring effective inter-agency cooperation.
Today, most disaster recovery teams are using satellite phones and simple analogue fast-deployable PMR systems with speech capability only. Due to the much reduced equipment size of modern technology using TETRA and TETRAPOL, also some teams are equipped now with relatively modern digital PMR voice and data capabilities. Virtually no mobile broadband systems are available today for the disaster recovery scenario.
SALUS supports the development of fast deployment systems with mobile broadband, integrated PMR voice and data capabilities, and interoperability with satellite IP connections and telephony, to re-establish communications anywhere and anytime. Most important is robust operation with high tolerance for extreme temperature and moisture conditions, including the mobile terminals (phones). Also zero configuration and fast start-up time are critical. If these requirements can be met, instant availability of broadband data for video streaming (e.g. from helicopters) and large document transfer, as well as dependable voice and data communication, is becoming reality. This will dramatically improve situation awareness and coordination of rescue teams while deploying sensors and GPS (or equivalent) will increase in-field staff safety.
Temporary Protection reference scenario
This scenario deals with safety and security of citizens visiting large planned events, like football matches, pop concerts and protest demonstrations. Effective coordination is critical to serve the public, prevent violence and deal with health problems of individual people. PPDR officers need to cooperate with security guards and the organisers of the event, and quick interaction is required with regional PPDR teams to de-escalate a situation.
Today, most respectable venues own a TETRA network for local communications by the security guards, stewards and medical teams. CCTV is also available to get an impression of the situation. Sometimes events are held in places where there is no network available, like beach parties, causing difficulties in coordination.
SALUS greatly improves the safety and security of citizens by supporting the development of transportable systems with mobile broadband and integrated PMR voice and data capabilities, and local command and control room facilities. Interoperability with private networks to aid cooperation of PPDR officers with private security guards is offered by gateways. Mobile high-resolution video cameras can be deployed to get a detailed impression of incidents, and track and/or identify people for law enforcement purposes. Medical equipment with sensor capabilities may be interconnected through mobile broadband to improve paramedic assistance. All these applications improve coordination and situation awareness.
This vision can only be achieved by means of close cooperation of industry, SMEs, universities, research institutes, operators and users. These are all represented in SALUS, with four companies that have strong roots in PPDR communication network supply and services, and are determined to cooperate within SALUS to design common solutions for next-generation PPDR communication networks.
The full techno-economic scope of SALUS is fundamental to create innovative and competitive solutions that benefit industry, operators and PPDR users within the European member states. We believe that the combination of SALUS partners is unique to drive the future development of next-generation PPDR communication networks, maximising the benefit for end-users, operators and industry, also from economic point of view by building upon commercial-of-the-shelve solutions. In the European spirit, this cooperation will be executed in a transparent manner, building and promoting open standards and solutions, and creating the basis for healthy competition in the future.