|
“Interestingly, when these sessions are conducted by psychologists we often learn more about the realities of their working days from the discussions taking place than from the actual exercise of modelling itself.” ‘Legacy thinking’ Compounding these design and usability problems still further are changes in the actual jobs that we ask our emergency service staff to do and how the TETRA industry can best respond to these fast evolving roles. As David Greneche, head of terminals and management at Cassidian explains, “Most of the TETRA terminals currently deployed essentially represent a legacy kind of thinking that evolved solutions for specific problems – such as street policing where the main communications medium was voice. “A new trend is now, however, emerging to develop much more specialized solutions for specific user-case scenarios across the different functions that the emergency services carry out. To meet this demand from user communities, manufacturers are potentially going to have to develop – and support – larger and more diverse product portfolios. This is going to be a challenge as far as cost containment is concerned.” Changing fast If emergency service roles are changing fast, so too are the technical possibilities available to systems and applications designers – with much of the innovation coming directly from the consumer sector. In stark contrast to most of the last 100 years, where research and development was generally led by the defence sector, the past couple of decades have seen a shift through firstly commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) provisioning – adapting commercial products for military use – to the direct use of these products in mission-critical areas. The TETRA community has to adapt and exploit this innovation for its own ends, ensuring in the process that mission-critical discipline is appropriately enforced. Cassidian’s Greneche also emphasizes the importance of seeing TETRA as being one tool among many that the emergency services can deploy to better do their job: “While new capabilities are already enhancing TETRA still further – TEDS, WiMAX and LTE – and the emergency services will also increasingly need to interwork with public networks, it’s vitally important that we as an industry move quickly to develop and integrate these new user cases. “Staff might already be deployed on the streets with a GSM phone, a TETRA handset and a PDA and so we have to think ahead on how we might best combine these functionalities – and design them so that they can be easily used in high-stress situations. We’re already, for example, building proof-of-vision devices with customer feedback using tablet devices that employ wide displays and touch-screens. “While there are obvious advantages in using existing commercial platforms – such as Android and Windows – it’s also essential that these fulfil the necessary security and usability criteria for the emergency environment.” Complexity and usability Meanwhile, away from the streets and the emergency service front line, similar issues of complexity and usability are also affecting the ways in which command and control systems are being designed and deployed. Here the issues are probably even more complex and challenging. Different emergency services will have built up considerable legacy baggage over the years in terms of operational cultures, organization and systems. Increasingly, in these cost-conscious days, the local and national governments in charge will be looking for consolidation and rationalization wherever possible – while balancing the demands from ever more insecure constituents. For Euros Evans, chief technical officer of the UK TETRA service provider Airwave, supporting the interworking of the different services while simultaneously exploiting the benefits of new technologies and applications is one of the biggest challenges. “Users don’t want technology for technology’s sake”, he says. “If you take a typical traffic accident that might involve the fire brigade, the police, paramedics and ambulance service, how can information best be shared around those different functions, from the first risk assessment through to the final conclusion of the incident – especially when there might be other factors to take into account such as loads of hazardous chemicals or risks to public infrastructure? “There’s a growing awareness of how technology can deliver a faster and especially more efficient response in terms of the ‘context’ of any incident – particularly when it comes to delivering that information to the decision makers involved. “When an emergency call comes, for example, Caller Line ID can automatically display that caller’s location on an on-screen map and then populate the screen with information relevant to that particular incident – dangerous dogs, holders of firearms, patient profiles, CCTV feeds and so on.
|