APRIL - JUNE - 20238GOVBUSINESS REVIEWToday's volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) public safety landscape demands interoperability between organizations. However, when those who work in or support public safety hear the word "interoperability," many fixate on the panacea of interoperable public safety two-way radio communications that have been a hot topic for more than two decades. On the other hand, the need for rapid, real-time information exchange between public safety agencies beyond radio communications remains a peripheral discussion among a smaller group of practitioners.The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington (DFW) metropolitan area consists of more than 7 million people in 13 counties with over 200 cities, including 15 cities with at least 100,000 population. The North Texas Interoperable Radio Network comprises 78 primary system jurisdictions and organizations and another 91 mutual aid jurisdictions and organizations. Further, the network consistently expands capacity and subscribers on its Project 25 system. That means 169 public safety entities in North Texas can share information through two-way radio. Unfortunately, only a handful of those agencies can transmit real-time data to multiple agencies on a non-radio platform, such as a computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system.While public safety agencies have progressed toward radio interoperability with the help of the P25 standards, little progress has occurred in other interoperable arenas. For instance, only a handful of regional Emergency Communications Centers (ECC)serving multiple jurisdictions exist in the DFW area. It is more common for public safety entities in neighboring jurisdictions not to have multi-functional multi-jurisdictional CAD systems.Large-scale emergency events routinely spill over nominal jurisdictional boundaries in populated areas. Further, even the best two-way radio communications can become congested during the initial multi-jurisdictional response. In addition, the amount of incoming radio traffic in the early stages of such an event can overwhelm the most seasoned incident commanders. STRATEGIC ROADMAP FOR INTEROPERABLE PUBLIC SAFETYLance C. ArnoldIN MY OPINIONLance C. Arnold, Chief of Police, City of Weatherford Police DepartmentBy
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