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Satellite Communications Brings Critical Intelligence to Chicago Emergency Responders

Incident command vehicles stream live video to the Emergency Operations Center; links to city databases provide critical intelligence to responders at the scene.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Mobile Emergency Response Support vehicle uses satellite communications to stay connected during a disaster.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Mobile Emergency Response Support vehicle uses satellite communications to stay connected during a disaster.
Mark Wolfe/FEMA
The events of 9/11 and the 2005 hurricane season highlighted how quickly land-based communication networks can be overwhelmed during a disaster, either by physical damage to cell and radio towers or by a spike in mobile-phone traffic. Those events and others prompted the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) in 2006 to seek out a unified command system that provides 911 dispatch, communications, video and data transmission between a mobile command vehicle and the OEMC.

The OEMC awarded MorganFranklin a $2.8 million contract to design the system and tapped Intelsat to provide dedicated satellite bandwidth. What resulted was a unified command vehicle (UCV) — a mobile incident command truck that captures intelligence for the city's Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and incident commanders in field. The system can handle all the city's 911 dispatch operations in the event of a power failure or other disaster compromising Chicago’s public safety answering points.

Eye In the Sky

In 2007, the UCV attracted the attention of the Chicago Fire Department (CFD), which wanted to utilize similar vehicles for incident command. The CFD commissioned three similarly configured incident command vehicles that utilize the same infrastructure as the UCV.

The CFD uses the vehicles to gather intelligence at the scene of an incident. “The databases that we maintain on schools, high rises, hospitals — all that information is at our fingertips,” said Chief Anthony Vasquez, executive assistant to the CFD fire commissioner. “And off satellite we’re actually utilizing the city’s network. So it’s as if I’m sitting at my desk and functioning with the same capability.”

Having the satellite connectivity assists the city when managing planned events such as the Taste of Chicago, which attracts more than 3 million people to the city annually. The CFD uses the helicopter video feeds to track crowd movements that have the potential to shutdown or overtask the city’s trains and busses.

“That eye-in-the-sky camera gives us a clear view, not only tactically in the truck, but also at the Emergency Operations Center of actual crowd movements. And the option of not having it would be listening to a description of the pilot on the radio,” he said.

At a large event, the city partners with cellular carriers to bring in mobile antennas that augment the cellular network around the event. “But we don’t rely on that; we don’t rely on those networks to function,” Vasquez said. “Because our phone system is in the trucks, once on satellite, our voice over IP phones and our phone system are actually in the city network. So our fire stations have four-digit dialing. Our city Centrex lines have five-digit dialing. All that is enabled once we’re on satellite.”

The UCV is equipped with a 1.5 meter Ku-band (a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum in the microwave range of frequencies ranging from 11.7 to 12.7 GHz that’s commonly used for data transmission and communications over satellites) satellite dish and a backup .96 Ku-band satellite dish that provides the truck with 8 Mbps of bandwidth and more than 100 VoIP lines. The vehicle has one fire and one police dispatch position as well as three workstations for technicians to stream live video and audio.

Another “huge” capability of the truck, Vasquez said, is the ability to receive video feeds from helicopters around the city, utilize the video in the truck for tactical decision-making and relay that video to the city’s EOC. “So the truck and helicopter can deploy outside the city, function tactically at a location for some specific incident, and once on satellite that image is pushed to the city of Chicago EOC and also accessed on laptops by key command staff via the Web,” he said.

Vasquez said the CFD hasn’t had any trouble connecting to the satellite in bad weather. However, it has experienced connectivity issues in the midst of downtown high-rise buildings. “The biggest issue we have with elements is the positioning of the truck,” he said. “Our satellite is not directly south, it’s a little bit southeast. So when we’re in ‘the canyon’ [the middle of downtown] we have an issue with connectivity.”

To remedy that the city will lease more bandwidth and switch its satellite link to a directly south-facing satellite.

 

Investment Justification

The city’s contract with Intelsat  for bandwidth and dedicated satellite spectrum is set to expire and is currently being renegotiated, according to David Beering, managing director of advanced networks at MorganFranklin.

The OEMC didn’t immediately return requests for information regarding the operating costs of the satellite link and how the system is funded.

However, James G. Argiropoulos, first deputy of the OEMC, said in a recent webinar that the mayor considers the system an investment for the totality of public safety and homeland security in the city.
 

[Photo courtesy of Mark Wolfe/FEMA.]

Corey McKenna is a staff writer for Emergency Management magazine.
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