NIST Develops First ‘Roadmap’ for Public Safety Communications Research

The US Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has published the first “roadmap” for the next 20 years of research needed to establish seamless, broadband public safety communications networks across the United States. The new roadmap, the first of a planned series on relevant technologies, focuses on location-based services to improve situational awareness for police, firefighters, emergency medical services and other first responders. The roadmap was commissioned by NIST’s Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) program, which has been performing research, development, testing and evaluation, and creating standards to support first responder communications since 2002.

One of the PSCR’s goals is to enable broadband public safety data, video and voice communications across different agencies and jurisdictions. To that end, the PSCR operates a 700-MHz public safety broadband demonstration network and provides technical advocacy by gathering requirements and developing standards. The new roadmap offers a vision of what public safety communications might look like in 20 years. It identifies software, device and network R&D investments needed to achieve that vision. The roadmap points out opportunities for action by multiple stakeholders, including federal, state and local governments; academia; industry; and the public safety community. The document is based on ideas captured during a 2013 workshop involving 150 participants from both the public and private sectors. A number of technology trends potentially affect public safety communications, according to the report. Advances in wearable technologies and public safety applications for them are expected in 5 to 10 years, and convergence with the Internet of Things and full integration into public safety use is foreseen in 10 to 20 years. The current reliance on voice communications for public safety is expected to give way to primarily data communications in some environments in 10 to 20 years.