Interoperability

Interoperability is ultimately about relationships and trust. There must be a need and willingness to communicate and share information, plus each group must trust the other to live up to the shared commitments and to not abuse any shared privileges.

Interoperability is a tool that can be used as part of an effective incident management solution. ICS / IMS / NIMS are the recognized solutions for effectively managing incident responses,
especially involving multiple agencies.

The use of interoperability and its effectiveness, depends on how well an incident is managed and how well the groups and agencies work together. The best Interoperability technology and SOPs are useless if people don't use them.

Interoperability Continuum

The SAFECOM program in the US and CITIG in Canada, provide a lot of information on Interoperability and best practices. The key component for development of an interoperability plan, is the Interoperability Continuum. The continuum has 5 areas that must be addressed, in order to succeed.

	Radio Interoperability
	Video Interoperability
	P25 = Interoperability?
	Interoperability Between P25 & Other Systems
	Interoperability Options
	IP Networks Security & Support
	ICS / IMS / NIMS
	CITITG
	SAFECOM
	CSRIC - FCC Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council

When developing interoperability solutions, it's a good idea to keep the KISS Principle in mind. When sitting at a desk, with lots of time, it's easy to develop solutions that may be overly complicated. Remember that the people using the solution are probably reacting to an incident and may never have spent time thinking about how to solve interoperability problems.

Willing Partnerships Are Key To Success

Interoperability has different levels of interest, understanding and accountability within each agency or organization. For interoperability to be effective and used regularly, it requires support from across the organization, no matter what type of voice, video or data interoperability is involved.

Senior Leaders

Senior Leaders must support and promote cooperation and information sharing with partner agencies. Too often the role of senior leaders is seen only as Governance, setting high level direction and signing MOUs.

In order for interoperability to actually work and be effective, senior leaders must be interoperability champions within their organization. This includes helping to ensure there is funding to implement the new technology and write SOPs, as well as funding to practice new interoperability agreements. Senior leaders must also promote and demonstrate the benefits of working with the partner agency. If daily activities and comments of senior leaders demonstrate they have no use for, or desire to work with, interoperability partners, that message will flow down through the organization and working level partnerships and cooperation with interoperability partners will not develop.

Communications Systems and Support Staff

Communications system staff must ensure that interoperability solutions are reliable, easy to use and effective. Interoperability may have short term and long term solutions, based on funding and system replacement time lines.

Simply connecting radios or systems together is not enough. These interoperability connections need to be optimized for quality and functionality, through internal efforts and partner cooperation.

End Users In The Field

End users of interoperability need to practice and use the interoperability on a regular basis, so they become familiar with both the solution and working with partners.

In a crisis we fall back on what we know. If the interoperability capabilities and partnerships have not been used regularly, then they can be perceived as risky to use in a crisis. Developing the partnerships with other agencies as part of interoperability can identify strengths and capabilities that are available through partners, that were not known about before.

Radio Interoperability

Cloud with Agency A, B and C, with a radio in
the middle.

Interoperability is typically thought of as a radio communications capability, where different groups or agencies are able to communicate on scene, using two way radio. Communications may be on shared radios, common channels, or through system connections.

One of the often misunderstood concepts of radio interoperability is that interoperability is not about everyone being able to talk to anyone on their radio. Knowing who should be able to communicate and when is one of the components that should be thought through in advance and should be included in interoperability SOPs.

One reason for not connecting everyone to anyone, is due to critical communications practices that must be followed in an emergency to ensure the life safety of those involved. For example, dispatch centres closely monitor activities in the field, to relay information between the scene and other parts of the organization and to issue critical notices like fire evacuation tones.

Mixing different agencies, from different services, who are providing different on scene functions, onto a common radio channel or talkgroup, may actually cause more problems and increase risk.

On the other hand mixing different agencies from the same service, can be beneficial. This might be different police agencies working together to provide security for an event, or different fire departments fighting a common fire.

There are other situations, such as a strike team, where different agencies, from different services are mixed together effectively. This works because they are working as a team, to provide a common function and communications within the team is critical. Heavy Urban Search and Rescue (HUSAR) is an example of where mixed service teams may be used.

Radio Interoperability Challenges & Considerations

Standards like P25 help improve the technical implementation of radio Interoperability, however there are a number of technical challenges providing interoperability between standards and even when implementing Interoperability within a single technology standard.

Multiple Digital Standards

There are several digital radio standards in use, each with it's benefits and limitations. P25, NXDN, DMR, TETRA are all available and in use in North America, but so far, no one builds a radio that supports more than one standard at a time.The only common standard between radios seems to be analog.

There is some exciting work being done with Software Defined Radios (SDR) which could be built into a gateway device, to provide direct digital connectivity between systems. From the gateway management software, the user would define the radio standards to be configured into the SDR and then the audio is linked digitally between the SDR ports, through software. This would have the benefit of not bringing the audio back to analog in order to connect systems together, so analog to digital conversion only takes place in the end user radios.

Multiple Frequency Bands

Different agencies and organizations operate in different radio frequency bands. The choice of frequency band is based on historical use, frequency availability, performance and cost. New multi band radios can bridge the gap, but this will take time as the size and cost gets closer to a conventional single band radio.

There are some interesting uses of multi band radios for systems where two bands are used, one a lower band for the rural portion of the network and and a higher band for the denser urban areas.

Coverage Area

Different agencies and organizations often have different service areas, so radio coverage is designed to work within an agencies respective service area, and any coverage outside is a simple result of the physics of radio waves not understanding service boundaries.

Systems can be connected together, but once a radio goes beyond the coverage area for the system it is using, interoperability is lost. This is one area where P25 systems on the same frequency band can be connected together, allowing users to roam across systems, while maintaining connectivity back within their own service area.

Analog-Digital Audio Conversion Loss

Radio systems and interoperability switches typically interconnect signals internally as digital audio, however the connection from the radio system or interoperability switch to a base station or portable radio uses analog audio. When systems are linked together there can be audio signal degradation due to the multiple analog to digital conversions in the end to end signal path.

Conversion between analog and digital is based on approximations of analog signal values. Current audio processing and compression technologies can produce very good quality audio signals on digital radio systems. However audio quality can suffer due to cumulative effects when the there are several analog/digital conversions in series.

Proprietary Systems

There are still older proprietary systems in place and many of these will not be replaced for a few years. Interoperability solutions need to be able to interface with these systems.

Video Interoperability

There have been solutions to allow more than one agency to share access to video cameras, as well as options to hand off video saved on portable storage medium, but overall, video interoperability is relatively new. With the migration to IP cameras, higher bandwidth wireless solutions, the Public Safety broadband initiative, and a general increase in information sharing, video interoperability will become more common.

Some of the challenges with video interoperability is the nature of video, which may capture information that is not related to the event, such as people walking by, how to connect networks together securely, and how to control who gets the video once it leaves the originators control.

IP Networks Security & Support

Radio communications, NG911 and security systems are all IP enabled, allowing them to use standard networking hardware, or connect over existing Public Safety and enterprise networks. Applications anywhere on the network can interface with the systems, expanding the functionality and range of users. With this comes the need for more physical and IT security to ensure the integrity and privacy of the information on these systems.

These once independent IP networks now are expanding beyond the physical boundaries of the organization, to connect between systems in support of voice, data and video interoperability. Connecting secure networks together is a bit of a contradiction of keeping the network secure.

Maintaining the skills to configure and support a dynamic interconnection between secure networks may be a challenge for some agencies and organizations.Enterprise IT departments who were never involved before, may not be ready to meet the service levels required for these systems. This is just one of the new realities that must be thought through before implementing a new solution and system to system interoperability.