Panel notes development of public-safety apps, need for dialogue to create more

When Mark Reddish and his fellow volunteer firefighters arrived on scene to render aid to a non-English speaking pregnant woman experiencing pain, they instinctively pulled out their smartphones.

One used an app to track the patient’s vital signs while another used his smartphone as a translation tool and Reddish looked up her medications to better understand her medical history.

“Now, we weren’t using apps that were necessarily approved by our department or had been vetted, but we were able to give a more effective response and provide better care to our patient,” said Reddish, who is a government relations associate with the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO).

Reddish was a speaker during a webinar on public-safety application development that was part of the IWCE Virtual Show and is now available on demand for show registrants (registration is free; enter the Auditorium to access all archived webinars).

The personal scenario Reddish described illustrates how prevalent applications are becoming in the field. Reddish noted that this interest is a major driving force behind the development of other applications, as is the promise of a public-safety broadband network and the transition to other IP-based platforms, such as next-generation 911.

One emerging application that many police departments are now adopting are body-worn cameras.

Seventy sheriff’s deputies in Buncombe County, N.C., will start wearing the cameras in January. Sheriff Van Duncan said he believes the camera program will help ensure accountability while protecting what can be a fragile relationship with the public.

“Overall, I feel that our relationship with our community here in Buncombe County is very good and very positive,” Duncan said. “I also realize that can turn on a dime. So we’re making use of this technology, looking out ahead seeing what we can do to keep that relationship positive.”

One of the tricky parts is figuring out what to do with all that video, though. Duncan’s office purchased a server capable of 10 terabytes of storage. Video from an incident, such as an officer-involved shooting, automatically would be saved, but the non-incident video will likely be kept for about 45 days.

“Some of this, because it is fairly new technology, is a little bit of trial and error,” Duncan said.

Also, tapping into social-media data offers a range of uses for law enforcement, said Kaethe Beck, managing director for VACCINE within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence at Purdue University. VACCINE stands for Visual Analytics for Command, Control, and Interoperability Environments.

“There’s a number of ways that you can use social media in order to determine what people are saying about you—if they notice your presence—but also as an early-warning detection system for problems and issues,” Beck said during the webinar.

For example, a Purdue University police official was able to detect threatening comments aimed at the band section during a football game using the center’s web-based Social Media Analytics and Reporting Toolkit (SMART), Beck said.

“He simply moved police officers,” she said. “It was a really easy thing for him to do. He just reallocates his sources and is potentially preventing any threat from occurring.”