How The Challenges We Share Inspire Public Safety Innovation

Maintaining safety and security in Australia is both demanding and complex. With natural disasters growing more frequent and severe, expansive geographies to protect and emerging threats, including cyber-crime, the nation’s emergency services are constantly tested by a diverse range of issues.

As a citizen of the United States, I appreciate and respect how fighting common challenges together has strengthened our bilateral bonds. We have shared our resources to combat parallel threats including wildfires in North America and Australia’s Black Summer Fires - disasters too great for our respective emergency services to face alone.

Now, as fire seasons in the northern and southern hemispheres grow longer, it’s not always possible to share vital firefighting resources between our nations.

To be better prepared for natural disasters and to stay ahead of more persistent threats, emergency services in Australia and the U.S. are investing in innovation.

Communicating Through The Crisis

Robust and reliable communication is essential for maintaining safety, awareness and coordinating resources on the front lines of any emergency. Public safety organisations in both the U.S. and Australia depend on a suite of standards-based technologies based on Project 25 (P25). This includes two-way radios and broadband enabled-enabled devices that allow emergency responders to exchange critical voice and data communication across agencies and jurisdictions. This much needed capability enables those responding to disasters to collaborate and share interoperable voice communication, even when using radio products from different manufacturers.

Throughout history, mission-critical public safety radio networks have been proven to deliver resilient and reliable team-based communication in times of disaster. These networks are as important today as ever, and their value is further emphasised at times when cellular networks become compromised, overloaded or otherwise unavailable, such as during major storms, floods and other catastrophes.

The New South Wales Telco Authority operates the Public Safety Network (PSN), one of the largest emergency communications networks of its kind in the world. Serving more than 50,000 radio users from more than 50 emergency services, government agencies, essential services and local councils, PSN underlines the importance that governments continue to place in mission-critical communication.

Australian emergency services are also innovating to take their emergency communications further. Both New South Wales State Emergency Service and Fire and Rescue New South Wales have deployed SmartConnect, a mobile application that extends the reach of reliable communication by automatically switching communication channels between land mobile radio (LMR) networks, broadband and satellite services when users travel in and out of radio coverage areas. This helps first responders to remain focused on their mission, taking their communications lifeline with them wherever they roam - from rescue missions in Australia’s most rugged and remote locations to the buildings and transportation hubs of built-up city environments.

Similarly, public safety agencies in the U.S. are extending the capacity of their mission-critical radio communications in new ways.

Hurricane Ian, one of the deadliest storms to strike the U.S. in recent history, wrought significant damage, bringing a damages bill of more than USD $60 billion. Yet even at the height of the hurricane, when nearly one fifth of all cell sites were out of service, a public safety agency in Sumter County, Florida was still able to relay vital messages to emergency responders. The county kept its two-way radio communications intact by implementing a cloud-hosted fallback service that enabled uninterrupted communication between the county’s operations centre and responders in the field. This helped to increase the speed and accuracy of response to 9-1-1 calls, improve the allocation of resources and provide better support for storm victims overall.

Building And Connecting Essential Technologies

Mission-critical communication continues to meet the most essential needs of public safety organisations, but agencies are also increasing their use of software and cloud-based technologies, video security, data analytics and artificial intelligence. This supports better decision making, accelerates response times and, ultimately, helps them to deliver better safety and security outcomes overall.

One agency benefitting from the integration of different technologies is Western Australia Police (WA Police). With Motorola Solutions’ smart mobile application, PSCORE, WA Police officers receive valuable data from emergency calls and different back-end systems at their fingertips.

The solution has replaced the need for pen and paper notebooks and transformed the way officers work, removing up to 180,000 handwritten infringement notices every year. 

In 2022, PSCORE became the first public safety mobile application in the world to be integrated within Apple CarPlay. Now officers can manage key operational workflows from within police vehicles and use voice control features to maintain safety and focus while driving.

In the U.S. many public safety agencies are also integrating different technologies and systems to streamline and mobilise the flow of intelligence - a capability that not only saves valuable time, but helps to save lives.

To help its officers respond more efficiently to incidents while enhancing safety and quality of life for its residents, Yonkers Police Department in New York has undertaken a major modernisation of its public safety infrastructure.

Yonkers’ AWARE crime control centre brings together critical information from across community and public safety systems to provide 9-1-1 dispatchers, incident managers and first responders with a single, consolidated view of incidents as they unfold.

Combining body-worn camera feeds, anonymous tips from the community and a network of fixed and mobile video cameras, the Yonkers PD command centre has removed the barriers between siloed data sources and disconnected back-end systems that can hinder emergency response.

By providing the data needed to properly evaluate a situation in real time, emergency services can better evaluate risks, inform their decisions and allocate people and resources to greater effect.

The Continuing Transformation of Public Safety

Safety will always be the world's number one imperative because it provides the precondition needed for society to thrive.

As we look to the future, we know that technology that enables more powerful collaboration between public safety agencies and enterprises will play an essential role in helping to keep people, property and places safer everywhere.

By continuing to share their challenges and resources while driving innovation, Australia and the U.S will not only make their respective nations safer, but can help to inspire the leadership and collaboration needed to strengthen safety and security all over the world.

Jack Molloy is Motorola Solutions’ executive vice president and chief operating officer and based in the United States. He recently returned to Australia to meet with public safety agencies and explore public safety innovation in the country.

Learn more about how Motorola Solutions is solving for safer by building and connecting technologies to improve safety everywhere.