Public Safety and Response
| Public Safety | ||||||
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| Sectors | Public Safety | |||||
| Contact | Brenda Bannan | |||||
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This section addresses technology requirements definition, development, and deployment among traditional emergency services and first responder agencies—police and fire, EMS, search and rescue, and emergency management, particularly as employed in EOCs. These agencies and services constitute the inner ring of Figure 1 on page 8. After identifying organizations involved in daily public safety incident management, this section provides an overview of U.S. models for best practices. To strengthen consistency at the local, city, state, and national levels, operating best practices must be implemented consistently at each level to assist incident command centers, incident commanders and first responders from law enforcement, fire, EMS, and 9-1-1 Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) centers responsible for successful incident response. This section also provides input from the March 2017 PSSC Workshop, in which participants identified key requirements, resources, and guidelines for cities to effectively adopt smart technology in public safety and response.
Key Characteristics
Public safety and response agencies have specific advantages and limitations for adopting new and cutting-edge technologies. Factors influencing decisions to adopt new technologies include:
- Long-standing organizational histories, culture, and ethos, and a formalized operational doctrine within individual agencies and collectively through the NIMS/ICS structure;
- Specific technical and professional skills and a facility with integrating and deploying tested technologies and systems that add value to mission accomplishment;
- Demands and requirements for 24x7 readiness for emergency response that limit the ability to conduct operational test and evaluation, and customarily remove operating teams and management from direct involvement in research and development of new systems; and
- An institutional bias toward incremental improvements in tested and deployed systems, rather than adoption of cutting-edge technologies that could require technical and doctrinal change. This is an understandable result of these agencies’ 24x7 readiness posture, and to typically limited budgets that are directed to covering operational and contingency costs.
Priorities for technology solutions are focused on safety of individual responders and protection of mission effectiveness, communications interoperability between responder agencies, enhancing situational awareness between field units, incident command and EOCs, and improving decision-making based on real-time access and processing of data and situational reporting.
U.S. Models for Public Safety Response
Public safety officials and first responders—such as EMS, fire-rescue personnel, and law enforcement officers—need to share vital data or voice information across disciplines and jurisdictions to successfully respond to day-to-day incidents and large-scale emergencies. Many people assume that emergency response agencies across the nation are already technologically interoperable. However, first responders often cannot talk to some parts of their own agencies—let alone communicate with agencies in neighboring cities, counties, or states. To help address issues in interoperability and incident management, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has developed tools such as the Interoperability Continuum, National Incident Management System (NIMS), and Incident Command System (ICS), which support the foundation for a “Smart Public Safety” implementation. FEMA has defined NIMS and the supporting training for the ICS5 as a proposed national guideline for consistent operational implementation for public safety incident management.
Interoperability Continuum
Developed with practitioner input by DHS’s SAFECOM program, the Interoperability Continuum tool is designed to assist emergency response agencies and policy makers to identify five critical success streams that must be matured to achieve a sophisticated interoperability solution: governance, SOPs, technology (both voice and data), training and exercises, and usage of interoperable communications. Jurisdictions across the nation can use the tool to track progress in strengthening interoperable communications. Figure 4 provides a depiction of the Interoperability Continuum. To drive progress along the five streams of the Interoperability Continuum, emergency responders typically observe the following principles: • Gain leadership commitment from all disciplines (e.g., EMS, fire-rescue response, and law enforcement; • Devise the appropriate governance arrangements; • Foster collaboration across disciplines through leadership support; • Interface with policy makers to gain leadership commitment and resource support; • Use interoperability solutions regularly; • Plan and budget for ongoing updates to systems, procedures, and documentation; and, • Ensure collaboration and coordination across the continuum. Interoperability is a multi-dimensional challenge. To gain a true picture of a region’s interoperability, progress in each of the five inter-dependent elements must be considered. For example, when a region procures new equipment, that region should plan and conduct training and exercises to make the best use of that equipment.