DENVER and WASHINGTON-Arriving at the current state of post-deployed wireless enhanced 911 Phase II capabilities has been a feat in and of itself, but deployment does not mean success, and for many, the real work toward E911 starts now, said speakers at the May 21 meeting of APCO’s Project Locate in Denver.
Groups like the Association of Public-safety Communications Officials, the Emergency Services Interconnection Forum, the National Emergency Number Association, the Department of Transportation, and the E911 Institute are making progress, said Dale Hatfield, former chief of the Federal Communication Commission’s Office of Engineering and Technology and author of a 2002 report on E911. “Efforts like this conference are critical and make a difference,” said Hatfield.
Since 2002, progress has been made. Almost one-third of all cell sites-46,000-are Phase II enabled, according to Mario Proietti, chief executive officer of TechnoCom, which provides wireless location operations support systems and business support systems solutions.
In addition, 18 percent of county public-safety answering points have already deployed Phase II service, and PSAPs representing 50 percent of the population have requested Phase II capabilities. Proietti expects the top 20 markets to have deployed Phase II technology by the end of this year.
One of the more recent additions to the Phase II club, Montgomery County, Md., hosted congressional staffers and the press on May 24 to mark its compliance. Montgomery County is one of the few places in the country where E911, traffic management and the county emergency operations center are all housed in the same location. A new million-dollar mobile command center was also highlighted.
Still, in many respects, the challenge is just beginning. Now that the advanced capabilities have been deployed, PSAPs, carriers and consumers are left to figure out the intricacies of a system that depends on many variables.
Hatfield said current concerns, evident at the conference, surround end-to-end testing, consumer expectations, accommodation of new requirements and the implications of new commercial location-based services and new wireless technologies like voice-over-IP and WiMax.
Location systems face five widespread potential problems, according to Proietti, including provisioning errors, database errors, network element errors, RF environment errors and interconnection errors-all of which impact the accuracy and reliability of E911.
To combat those potential problems, TechnoCom has laid out five metrics by which it believes the quality of service of Phase II E911 can be measured: location accuracy, location latency, routing of location calls, yield of Phase I default percentage and coverage.
Of course testing is required to ensure the systems are functioning correctly, and carriers are doing their part to ensure their systems are up to par, said Susan Sherwood of Sprint PCS. Sherwood said Sprint performs “end-to-end functional testing” with PSAPs to ensure its cell sites are Phase II compliant.
But not all parties agree that carrier-run tests are a fair and accurate way to monitor the success rates of the systems. Under requirements established by the FCC for testing, carriers themselves define the geographic area they will use for testing, determine their own test methodology and test accuracy within their own network control. So, though carriers are complying, the testing may not be enough to prove the effectiveness of the entire system.
Steve Marzolf, coordinator of the public-safety communications division of the Virginia Information Technologies Agency for Virginia, for example, said accuracy testing is his state’s No. 1 issue. Marzolf implied that carrier testing of E911 is not comprehensive enough to offer accurate expectations about what the network can and cannot do, especially in rural areas.
But according to Sherwood, Sprint has concerns with alternative proposals for PSAP-level testing including: the fact that the jurisdictional boundary of the PSAP may be too small for statistically accurate testing, that the wireless carriers would be accountable for networks and equipment outside their control, and that resources would be diverted away from further PSAP deployments.
No matter what the method, testing should be ongoing, according to Joe Nasser, senior vice president and division manager for RCC Consultants’ public-safety information systems division. Because of the many constantly changing variables, annual testing, for example, would be insufficient for any E911 network, said Nasser.
ESIF, a committee of the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions, is working to mitigate issues related to the deployment of E911 service. Some of the major issues ESIF is concentrating on include PSAP readiness, location reliability and confidence, text messaging to PSAPs, standardized carrier procedures and uniform location testing guidelines.
The committee recently completed its “High Level Requirements for Accuracy Testing Methodologies” document that “provides a common frame of reference that individual stake holders can use to validate the accuracy methodology of 911 location technologies.” The document is open for comment until tomorrow.
But even if a PSAP and all of the wireless carriers in an area are Phase II compliant, making sure that all of the entities necessary to respond to an incident have all of the same information is difficult. The ComCare Alliance is trying to help by developing the Emergency Provider Access Directory.
“The lack of a directory to enable that kind of communication was a critical missing link. We hope EPAD will fill that gap,” said Judith Woodhall, executive director of the Communications for Coordinated Assistance and Response to Emergencies Alliance. “The point is to have the information available so that everybody can see the information about an incident. It is not about technology; it is about bringing disparate groups together.”
ComCare received a $1.7 million grant from the Department of Justice to develop EPAD and hopes to release a request for proposals in July, choose a vendor partner in August and have an alpha version of EPAD ready in January. A flash demo is being fine tuned but will shortly be available on the ComCare Web site at comcare.org.
EPAD is not expected to replace existing technology that entities already have, said Rob Martin, EPAD director of partnership development and communication. “It helps use the information you have.”
ComCare envisions a scenario where an incident occurs-anything from a traffic accident to a major terrorist attack-and EPAD subscribers in a specific geographic area would receive information about the incident that can then be downloaded into their own systems for their own use.
While the media is expected to subscribe to and be a member of EPAD, the type of information it receives may be slightly different than what others receive, said David Alyward, president of National Strategies and ComCare founder.
“If you were a daily press outlet or TV station, you would be registered for weather alerts or major events so you would get the information you need,” said Alyward. As for a traffic accident, “you might not get all of the data-there is no reason to have the actual crash data-but rather the fact that a crash occurred.”
