Crime stoppers
By : Roseanne Gerin
In the summer of 1997, southwestern Poland was deluged by the worst floods in the past two centuries, drenching an area of about 5,900 square kilometers. National rescue agencies, civil defense units, the army and international rescue teams performed thousands of emergency evacuations. But because of outdated communications equipment, rescuing people wasn't easy.
"It turned out we had no efficient telecommunications cooperation system," said Wojciech Wroblewski, an Interior Ministry advisor. He said the lack of coordination among local emergency forces proved to be disastrous during the flood as they used different frequency bands and signaling standards for their analog radio systems. About 55 people died in the flood, and more than 140,000 had to be rescued.
To prevent similar communications breakdowns in the future, the Polish government called for a modern and reliable radio communications system that could coordinate different public safety forces through a standard, integrated telecom network during large-scale catastrophes.
TETRA guinea pigs
Long arm of the law: Zbigniew Chwalinski, director of comunications at Warsaw's national Police Headquarters
While the government currently considers plans to implement a nationwide communications network for its public safety organizations, police departments in four major cities are about to serve as test cases for a future countrywide system based on a standard called TETRA a digital, wireless radio technology that ccan transmit voice and data via a network of radiophones and computer consoles.
The government has awarded contracts for the delivery and installation of TETRA-based command and control centers in police departments in Warsaw, Lodz, Szczecin and Krakow. Warsaw's center will be launched in June followed by three months of testing, while the centers in Lodz and Szczecin will be ready in August, and the one in Krakow by the spring of 2002.
"We have been working on command and control systems for many years," said Zbigniew Chwalinski, director of the communications and IT department at Warsaw's National Police Headquarters. "In Poland the crime rate has been rising for several years, especially in the largest cities, and it's very difficult for the police to reduce it."
Nevertheless, Chwalinski said, the TETRA-based command and control centers similar to 911 emergency call centers in the United States should help police attain a higher disclosure rate, or the number of times when criminals are caught red-handed. He expects the disclosure rate to increase by 15% in big cities within the next three years, as it has in other major world cities where TETRA-based police systems have been implemented.
TETRA, an acronym for Terrestrial Trunked Radio Systems, combines a range of communications services and features via a network of radios, computer terminals and base stations for both private and public-access mobile-radio users who require high-performance wireless communications.
The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) (http://www.etsi.org), a non-profit organization that sets telecommunication standards used in Europe, developed TETRA as a common standard, just as Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) became the wireless European standard for mobile phone operators. Furthermore, the TETRA standard has been recommended by the European Commission, the administrative arm of the European Union (EU), as the universal standard for member countries.
"It is the only EU standard so the consequence is that TETRA doesn't stop at borders," said Jan Feja, the Lodz Police Department's deputy commander, who is in charge of the implementation of the new command and control center. "And all radio phones in the European Union can log into the system."
Compared to the current analog radio systems used by most public safety organizations, including police and ambulance services, TETRA-based systems offer high voice quality, fast call set-ups, group and broadcast calls, dispatch operations, encrypted two-way radio communications and packet data transmission.
In July 1999, the government awarded a two-year, zl. 66 million ($16.9 million) contract to the U.S. telecommunications technology company Motorola (http://www.motorola.com/cgiss/emea/home.html) to supply and install a command and control center based on the TETRA standard at Warsaw's Police Headquarters. The new center contains about 75 consoles, a crisis center in a separate rear room and a big screen monitor on the front wall of the room. Officers are currently being trained to use the system.
The government also awarded contracts for zl. 40 million ($9.1 million) for the Lodz Police Department's TETRA-based command and control centers, zl. 35 million ($8 million) for Szczecin's center, and zl. 40 million ($10 million) for Krakow's unit, Chwalinski said.
A CAD's eye view
Jacek Piotrowski, key accountant manager at Motorola Poland's commercial, government and industrial solutions sector.
The police command and control centers are based on computer-aided dispatch (CAD) software that automatically loads and routes incoming calls and transmits incident reports to dispatchers. The system's consoles will allow officers in patrol vehicles and dispatchers at the centers to view images from accident scenes, photos of suspects and fingerprints, and enable them to access databases to check info on hazardous material, crime suspects, driver's licenses, stolen vehicles or wanted persons.
A police officer or fire officer when en route to the scene can talk to his dispatcher while checking some data on the scene on criminals via a mobile data terminal," said Jacek Piotrowski, the account manager for Motorola Poland who handled the company's contract with the Warsaw police department.
The command and control centers will also enable dispatchers to manage patrol units and monitor road traffic. Police patrol cars will be outfitted with a global positioning system (GPS) to let dispatchers in the centers pinpoint their exact locations on digital maps. The TETRA-based technology center will also allow people at the control centers to monitor the patrolmen's every move in the car, thereby increasing the efficiency of the police units. "Unfortunately, a problem of every police force in the world is that officers simply lie about what they do and where they are," said Chwalinski.
Police say the TETRA-based command and control centers will be a welcome upgrade from the conventional analog radios based on Swedish telecom company Ericsson's Edacs system, which has been used since the mid-1990s. With the analog trunking radios, users must select a channel and wait in line until their calls are answered. Since these conventional systems offer only one channel for police, one for fire brigades and one for ambulance services, too many calls at once cause a bottleneck of transmissions that can be delayed for up to 10 seconds.
"It's enough to press a button (with TETRA-based systems), and you get a free communication channel," said Andrzej Pacek, deputy head of the department for telecommunications and IT at the voivodship headquarters of the Szczecin Police.
Criminals on the line
All systems go: Computers to run to the Tetra system for the warsaw Police Department are being installed and tested in five control centers around the city.>
Law-enforcement professions say that one of the major benefits of TETRA-based systems is that wireless voice communication cannot be overheard by criminals, because of digital encryption. The technology also provides a better quality of voice calls, and data transmission capabilities are greater than with the conventional communications system.
Chwalinski said that with the current technology criminals can easily intercept radio conversations. "The solutions used now are simply imperfect, and it really has an impact on the safety of policemen," he said.
In addition, with TETRA-based systems groups of police officers and other public safety forces can be equipped with internal conversation groups, which isn't possible at the moment. During a major highway accident, for example, a policeman can communicate and transfer data from his patrol car to a fireman.
"What we want to achieve is that the operator of the system can within two seconds include all those people involved and they can communicate immediately," Chwalinski said.
Another major benefit is that the databases of the command and control centers will provide full-country coverage. Without a nationwide system, Chwalinski said, the police would have slim chances of nabbing a thief who lives in Przemysl, steals a car in Warsaw and sells it in Szczecin.
Finally, law-enforcement officials say that the conventional analog systems have only a seven to 10-year life span, whereas TETRA can be used for 20 years, and system upgrades can be added to existing networks.
But TETRA-based technology is not foolproof yet. Although there have been no problems with the system so far, some limits exist, Chwalinski said. Encryption capabilities still need to be tested by companies providing the technology. Also, image transmission service is not available yet, but should be within the next two years. Piotrowski said that some of the more advanced TETRA features, such as the wireless transmission of packet data and encryption of communications, still need to be tested for interoperability among the different TETRA suppliers on the market.
As of now, the government has announced it will hold a series of tenders for TETRA-based command and control centers in the capital cities of each of Poland's 16 voivodships within the next five years. During the second half of this year, two more tenders for TETRA-based police command and control centers will be conducted for the Tri-City area of Gdansk, Gdynia and Sopot as well as for Katowice. The remaining tenders will be organized within the next three years, Chwalinski said. The ultimate goal is to eliminate the conventional analog systems and to outfit all the country's 98,000 police officers with the new TETRA-based technology equipment, he added.
And the whole country may go TETRA within the next few years as well. Led by the Interior Ministry, a special government committee of about 20 ministry representatives and industry experts was established last July to analyze the possibility of introducing TETRA-based radio systems for all public safety agencies nationwide. Wroblewski, chairman of the TETRA committee, called the initiative a government priority that enjoys the support of all political parties. Within the next month, the committee will prepare a project for the implementation and potential costs of the project. The interior minister will then present the detailed blueprint to the government.
Although Wroblewski said the cost of a nationwide TETRA-based system was difficult to pinpoint, he estimated it would reach hundreds of millions of dollars, with money coming from the combined resources of the state budget and from outside financing. But a nationwide TETRA-based system should take no more than five years to implement, added Chwalinski, who is vice chairman of the committee, since the investment would be unprofitable for investors if delayed. Nevertheless, the Interior Ministry is confident the decision will be made this year before the parliamentary elections in September.
