Ever since the attack on the US by terrorists in 2001, the entire country has awakened to the need of communications interoperability for public safety agencies.  Even before that tragic event, law enforcement, fire, and EMS commanders have known about interoperability problems from the first time that they could not effectively communicate between agencies at a major event.

This article will explain what is actually needed to have interoperability for an agency, and the steps that must be completed to have full interoperability that will be effective for all agencies responding to an event.

Most agencies and departments have made great strides in achieving interoperability, but until all agencies have full interoperability between each other there will be situations that the planning falls apart for reasons that could have been foreseen and corrected.

In order for an agency to have interoperability with the other agencies and departments who respond to an emergency, there needs to be three general areas that must be planned for and in place before the agencies do have interoperability.  These three categories are:

1.      PRELIMINARY STEPS

2.      TECHNICAL DETAILS

3.      LICENSING

The preliminary steps start with the defining of which external agencies and departments that you want to have interoperability with.  In most instances, the agencies that respond to most major events already have plans and details of who needs to have interoperability with each other.

Where many agencies fall short on is their planning for interoperability in the really large scale emergencies.  This is where a huge event occurs in their own communities or an agency elects to go out of their primary area of jurisdiction to help another community far away from the communications infrastructure that the field units depend upon for reliable communications.  In addition, if a really large scale event occurs in the community and others come in from far away or from other States, can these foreign responders communicate with the local personnel who are in charge of the incident?  If the event is so large that the US military is involved, then the local people need to also make arrangements to have some interoperability with the military by having radios available to loan to the military for their command posts.

Besides the normal agencies, a really large event will require help from agencies and departments that are seldom called upon for most events.  In these cases, the interoperability needs to extend to these other departments, such as streets, sanitation, traffic signal, animal control, health department, and others as needed.

Because many of these outside agencies and departments seldom need to communicate with incident commanders, most of the radios that are used by these other departments do not have accessibility to the main interoperability channels that would be utilized in a major event.

In order to do an effective integration of all agencies and responders to a major event, the command staff needs to have radios at their deposal that operate on all bands to accommodate the various groups responding to the event.  Fortunately, there is hardware and radios available that will allow the incident commanders to have this interagency communications available.

Finally, certain events such as large scale tornados, hurricanes, floods, and terror attacks can cause a major disruption of the normal communications networks.  The US government has recognized these situations and has put into operation an agreement with the amateur radio community to provide backup communications that do not depend upon the normal communications infrastructure that is in place.  There are hundreds of situations in the last decade alone where the ham radio operators provided the only communications in and out of a stricken community.  Besides the communications ability of these volunteers, they also bring with some of them the technical knowledge to restore power and other complex systems that the average person does not know.

The first order of business in the technical area is to determine what frequencies are utilized by all of the agencies that have been identified by the emergency planning staff.  In most instances, the radio channels will be found in Low Band VHF, High Band VHF, UHF, UHF T-Band, 700 MHz, 800 MHz, and 900 MHz bands.  In addition, for wide spread emergencies, the High Frequency short wave bands may be utilized to travel the great distances, or for coordination at the state or national headquarters of the Emergency Preparedness Office.

The second thing that must be done is to license some common channels in each band that all radios that operate in that band can be set to.  The FCC has set aside quite a few channels in each band just for that purpose.  Even though those channels are available, they still must have a valid authorization to allow the units to operate on them.  Most of the State Police agencies have licensed these emergency channels for mobiles in their respective states, but the base stations in each community will need their own licenses from the FCC.  Besides the State authorized channels, the FCC has set aside a number of channels in each band on a national basis for use in emergencies.  It would be a good idea for each agency to have these national channels licensed and available to allow your agency personnel to travel to other jurisdictions or agencies from other jurisdictions to travel to your community and have interoperable communications.  You should have the authorizations and equipment for both base and mobile operation.  Some of these national channels allow for repeater operation, and the equipment should be acquired and be available in the event of a major event.

The radios from one band cannot communicate with those on a different band.  The solution for this situation is to purchase and install one or more interoperable Radio Message Switches.  These are devices that allow a radio to receive the traffic on one channel and rebroadcast (repeat) that same message on the other bands as it is received on the first radio.  A good switch will allow any of the radios to be the source control radio, and the all of the other radios to be the slave repeated radios.  As a unit responds to the first radio, it takes its turn as the source radio on its own band, and the other band radios are now the slave units.

Because it does require special wiring and level setting for each particular radio tied to the Radio Message Switch, the radio engineers and technicians must pre-wire and set up each radio in the command post or vehicle that has one of the cross-band Radio Message Switches.  This is part of the pre-planning that must be accomplished before there can be interoperability between agencies on different bands. 

Another area of concern is that each band radio will need its own antenna.  These need to be acquired, tested, and installed before the radios can operate.

Since radios can and do interfere with each other, the engineers and technicians will also want to perform certain tests to confirm that there is little interaction between radios from the different bands to keep interference to a minimum.

You also need to add the interoperable channels to ALL department radios that could possibly be needed in a large scale operation.  Most agencies also have agreements with amateur radio operators to have communications with the local amateur community, and have these radios also set up in the dispatch area, emergency management area, and mobile command posts, along with licensed amateur radio operators to control these radios.

What sounds like a good idea and takes only a few minutes to set up to operate, actually takes days or weeks to actually prepare for to have true interoperability.  Without these steps, you really do not have interoperability with anyone other than your own agency.

The FCC Authorizations are required to operate on any radio channel in the US except for a few low powered discrete channels in VHF.  In order to have true interoperability for use in an emergency situation, you need to have the FCC licenses in hand.  Even if your agency has switched to the 700 MHz, 800 MHz or 900 MHz bands, you should license and have equipment available and operating on the VHF and UHF bands for interoperability, plus the interoperable channels for the other bands mentioned here.  In addition, your command staff should have the radios in their mobile units or command posts on the interoperable channels and they must be properly licensed.  If a major event does occur, then you will be ready for it.

You should also confirm that the radio channels licensed by the State are applicable to your use, and that they are available and working.

Finally, be sure that the unit count on your FCC Authorizations have the unit count to include all of the units that you have added from the other departments and agencies outside of your jurisdiction that you have an agreement with for interoperability that are using your channels.

The operation of the Radio Message Switch should be a simple procedure.  The Radio Message Switch units in the market place today range from simple units where you just turn on the radio and Message Switch starts operating, to those that require a full day training course to set up the switch just to ties even two radios together.

Some of the Radio Message Switches allow for two or more independent groups to work independent of any other group.  In most cases, the number of simultaneous groups that can operate also sets the price of the Radio Message Switch.

Your Radio Message Switch should allow any of the radios to act as the source, where that radio receives a transmission and it causes all of the other radios tied to the switch to repeat that transmission on each band that has a radio tied to it.  In addition, any of the other band radios can respond to the first radio, and the responding radio then becomes the control radio that causes the other radios to repeat the transmission in real time.

Most of the Message Switches do require the operator to define the radios into interoperable radio groups, and to use a laptop computer or a series of switches as to what radios are in what groups.

Because the radios and bands may be unfamiliar to many of the users of a large scale event, and the Radio Message Switches may be fairly complex, there should be training for the operators and users of these interoperable radio systems.  In addition, there should be specific instructions on how to interconnect and use each radio in the mix.

Some of the equipment is so complex, such as certain Radio Message Switches, that it takes 2 days at the factory to train the operators on how to use the Switch.  Other Message Switches can be set up and operating in 5 minutes.

You want to make sure that all radio systems are functional at an event, and that the operator is trained to insure that this is the case.

Most communities will have mock drills to confirm that their emergency preparedness is working smoothly, that true interoperability does exist, and that the participating agencies follow the discipline as defined by the Emergency Services Manager (ESM).  If you do not have these drills, the heads of each department each think that they are in charge, and the chaos that ensues does not serve the community very well.  In addition, the Incident Commander needs to know that each department and agency is following the orders from the ESM, and that all agencies are on the same channel or group, unless directed to move to another channel or group.  A large scale event needs the cooperation of all agencies and departments involved in the event.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has also recognized that different agencies and different departments use codes to shorten communications time on the radio channels.  The problem with using codes and mnemonics is that not everyone understands the codes and letters, and there is confusion between agencies when they are used.  To fix this problem, FEMA has required ALL agencies to comply with the NATIONAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (NIMS) and to follow the NIMS guidelines for any incident where interagency cooperation is involved.  NIMS requires that units use complete phrases and details to describe a command or situation, and not to use codes.  This will eliminate any confusion between agencies.

READY PREPAREDNESS
 

In order for an agency to be ready for whatever comes along, the equipment, personnel, and plans must always be in a ready state for emergencies.  Since major incidents do not happen very often, the technical personnel should periodically test all of the equipment that would be used in a major event, and any item that is deficient in performance be fixed or replaced so that you never get caught with a lack of having all of your emergency preparedness equipment available at any time.  The taxpayers and government funding sources have provided the funding so that this equipment is available whenever it is needed, and the agencies who are responsible for the maintenance and operation of these systems do need to take the 24/7 availability seriously.  This includes not only the hardware working, but the operators and other personnel to be available as needed.  In addition, if the normal communications methods of alerting people are knocked out, an alternate alerting system needs to be in place to insure that the personnel are alerted. 

Interoperability is more than just having a channel on your radio to communicate on in a major event.  It starts with planning, acquiring hardware, technical details and wiring, many weeks of preparation, training, and exercises, so that you really do have interoperability at such an event.  In addition, the personnel that respond to such an event must be taught the discipline so that the Incident Commander has the full cooperation of all people that are responding to the event.

The thing to remember is that emergencies do not give you a warning before they happen.  You must be prepared for these emergencies long before they happen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ira Wiesenfeld, P.E. is a consulting engineer who has been involved in the radio communications business since 1966.  He has a BSEE, FCC General Radiotelephone Operators License, is a Senior Member of IEEE, and is also a Senior Certified Electronics Technician from ETA-International.  He has been a licensed amateur radio operator since 1963, and currently holds an Advanced Class license.  He has provided service for the broadcast, public safety radio, mobile telephone, radio common carrier, paging, manufacturing, military, and education markets, and also provides training; and has written a book on installation standards, along with numerous magazine articles.  Ira can be reached at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it