The Consortium is working closely with regional, state and national leaders on a broad, multi-dimensional effort to deploy next generation emergency ICT, starting with broadband access for all 9-1-1 and emergency response agencies, robust and secure broadband backbone networks connecting them, and the multiple services and applications enabled by such broadband access. Supporting those state and regional efforts, the Consortium is creating a broad-based safety proposal to:
- Develop essential national elements of Next Generation emergency ICT systems described below in an effort to complete these elements one time at the national level and make them available across the country, thus avoiding costly, non-interoperable duplication at the state/local level;
- Support a wide variety of state and regional trials and deployments in partnership with state and regional leaders to implement such national elements, as part of safety-focused projects or as part of larger state broadband deployments; • Ensure the development of such national elements enables a fully accessible 9-1-1 and emergency communications system for vulnerable populations, including people with disabilities.
Specific activities of the Consortium will include:
- Complete requirements, architecture and standards of Next Generation 9-1-1 and emergency information and communications technology (ICT);
- Complete the detailed design for shared state and regional backbone Emergency Service Internet Protocol networks (ESInets) for safety use, and facilitate the establishment of a national “internetwork” backbone to provide the (mostly application layer) connections between these state and regional backbone networks;
- Develop requirements for and seek funds to financially support the development of examples of “hosted safety services” for 9-1-1 and other emergency response sectors that can economically vault small and rural agencies into the future – specifically NG IP call management, Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD), and records management hosted services that will be available to any agency with high speed broadband;
- Develop requirements to assist ongoing efforts and address gaps not currently being addressed to enable the deployment of ubiquitous all hazards, inter-organizational messaging and public alert and warning systems that can be used by any authorized party to initiate emergency alert and warning messages;
- Support ongoing efforts to deploy hosted situational awareness applications nationally (e.g. Virtual Alabama);
- Develop requirements for and seek funds to financially support the development of middleware to share emergency medical information among involved emergency agencies (i.e. 9-1-1, EMS, hospitals, EOCs), including access by authorized emergency responders to critical emergency related data – implementing the official HHS Emergency Response Electronic Health Record Interoperability Specification and standards;
- Enable the above efficiently by issuing requirements for and seeking funds to financially support the deployment of first reference models of shared “core services” to support interoperability; these will be used to create standards to allow a system of federated core services (core services registration will occur locally, but a federated system is needed to allow communication between localities, and between levels of government). These include:
- Agency locator: GIS-based registry of the attributes of organizations involved in emergencies. This is needed for routing/sharing of information about incidents of all types and magnitudes among local, state, tribal, federal and private entities responsible for emergency response. As a partial analogy, think of this as the emergency community’s equivalent of the Internet’s Domain Name Service, or a map-based Yellow Pages of safety agencies;
- Access control/identity rights management and related security services where all affected organizations are registered and given appropriate authorizations to send and receive emergency information by area and incident type; and through which identities are confirmed; and
- Develop multi-level government processes to establish the rights and policies by incident type and area to register in the above core service software applications – a playbook to be used by all levels of government with the new core services – which allows each area to set its own rules while creating interoperability because of the standardized approach;
- Support safety practitioners in an intensive, national, all-domain effort to adopt existing emergency standards and develop specific new shared standards – for emergency messages, for common terms, and others such as core services and messaging protocols;
- Support a national effort to develop broadband-delivered emergency responder training, using the latest in digital education and training methods;
- Create and implement an education and outreach program aimed at key audiences; and
- Create an economics and service outcomes research analysis and template to apply nationally and within state and regional deployments to determine the overall costs and benefits of implementing NG9-1-1 and emergency communications systems.
