White Paper Abstract:
Public safety agencies want to improve their effectiveness and responsiveness to incidents within or outside their jurisdiction. With increased focus on homeland security, these agencies need even better interdepartmental and interagency communications with their most important resource, police officers and first responders in the field. Information technology, device technology, wireless, and networking are improving continuously. Applications supporting police, fire, and medical response units are transitioning from simple text and voice to rich multimedia applications. Real-time video, maps with satellite imagery, Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking, and global database searches are now available in handheld devices that first responders carry with them in the field. Public safety agencies want to enable these new applications and extend their existing applications from headquarters into the communities they serve.