The future for communications and emergency response
2021-08-27

Jason Burrows, Regional Sales Director, IDIS America

US security and FM managers have had to deal with a succession of emergencies over the last 18 months - spikes in gun violence, protests and civil unrest, and extreme weather events including flash floods, wildfires, air quality deterioration, and extreme heat incidents - all against the ongoing backdrop of COVID-19. 

These disruptive incidents have highlighted, as never before, the importance of resilience and preparedness.

The Texas freeze of February 2021, at its peak, left more than ten million people without electricity. For some users, the outage lasted several days and, as reported by NBC 5, it was communication breakdowns by those in charge of the electricity grid that left residents and other businesses unprepared.  The freeze had cascading effects on other services, including drinking water treatment and medical services. Economic losses from lost output and damage are estimated to be $130 billion in Texas alone, according to a report published in Energy Research & Social Science.

The conclusion is clear: increased extreme weather events are now having an impact in real-time. They are hitting faster and harder than even the more cautious climate modeling predicted and this month, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report, it was described as a ‘code red’ warning for humanity.

For corporate risk managers, and security and facilities teams – particularly those responsible for dispersed multi-locations - this presents a whole new category of challenge. Previously safe regions with stable weather conditions are now at greater risk of being disrupted, potentially with events that pose a threat to life.

The knock-on effects of disruption from such events will be even harder to predict, especially when overlayered on additional or pre-existing stresses.

Public authorities, private companies, and individual citizens may find themselves having to cope with interruptions to key supply chains and critical infrastructure, increased economic stresses, social unrest, or political instability.

While specific threats to a particular location are impossible to predict, the overall direction is clearer: the coming decade will almost certainly be characterized by increased challenges to business operations.

So how should organizations prepare?

Many of the tried and trusted risk management principles apply, and useful lessons can be drawn from the pandemic – three in particular: 1) that adaptation to major change is possible; 2) that responses improve over time, providing you can get through the initial crisis; 3) and that building infrastructure and resilience in advance is a very good idea.

On that latter point, the security industry has much to offer.

An area of increased focus is communications, in particular the emerging class solutions set to transform mass and targeted group communications. It’s a trend that may be further boosted by the Biden administration’s infrastructure and broadband push, with proposals for state and local investment in wireless communication to build out the next generation 5G network.

And that’s important, because it’s been proved many times over that during any emergency so much comes down to the ability of first responders to coordinate with each other, and to work with external agencies.

Control room teams, increasingly empowered by real-time video coverage and visual verification of events at local and remote sites, and by their access to rolling news feeds, are well placed to assess and verify events on the ground and to direct emergency responses.

The reach and effectiveness of security teams are being extended significantly by a new generation of mass communications apps on smartphones, which are allowing dispatch control teams to issue general warnings, to advise to site users, employees, and visitors, and to direct more targeted comms to specific teams and individuals.

For applications where reliable, instant communications are essential, many organizations have already shifted away from conventional two-way radio systems, choosing trunked radio instead. With these trunked systems a pool of digital PMR (Private Mobile Radio) resources is shared between users, in contrast to conventional radio which uses a dedicated single channel for each user.

But now, a more logical and cost-effective route is fast developing, and becoming a preferred option for many users: Push-to-Talk over Cellular (PoC). PoC offers the advantages of wide-area coverage (users are not restricted by the limited range of the repeaters and base stations needed for conventional radio comms); comparatively low cost; sufficient bandwidth for video and voice comms; and easy integration with increasingly powerful command and control platforms which combine multiple functions, from geo-location pinpointing to lone worker protection tools.

Devices such as PoC radios, PoC smartphones, PoC bodycams, and more connect to cellular infrastructure using a SIM card like those used in cell phones, to create a powerful and reliable network of tools that is easy to maintain and relatively cost-efficient.

The PoC market is growing at around 10% annually and is projected to reach $25.5bn by as early as 2027, up from $12bn just two years ago according to Forbes Business Insights.

PoC tech suppliers are looking for obvious growth in sectors including security, construction, healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing, logistics, and property management – but you can also expect to see PoC spread even further, and perhaps faster, driven by a growing awareness of the threat posed by extreme weather, and the need to prepare better, and to respond more effectively.

 
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