DHS Stakeholders Conference Hears First Responder Technology Needs

For the last few days I’ve been in Bellevue, Washington at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Stakeholders conference entitled “First Responder Priorities: Enabling First Responders Today and Tomorrow.” The objective of the conference was to identify first responder capability gaps that S&T can work on over the coming year. The process S&T used to do this was to have first responders from all disciplines talk to DHS and industry about their priority technology needs. DHS followed that with presentations on what is being worked and then will work with the first responders to fine tune the capability gaps.

I didn’t  really hear much that was new and that many of us haven’t seen and heard before in reports by practitioner organizations such as the Interagency Board for Equipment and Standardization, the SAFECOM Emergency Response Council that advises both S&T’s Office of Interoperability and Compatibility (OIC) and the DHS Office of Emergency Communications (OEC) , the User Working Group (UWG) that  works with the S&T First Responder Technologies (R-Tech) program and other organizations, including the Governors Homeland Security Advisory Council.

At the top of the list – as has been consistently the case – was the urgent need for seamless interoperable communications of voice, data and imagery. Included in that was the need for assured communications and better voice quality. Other needs that were brought up included better tools for situational awareness and analysis, predictive tools, a next generation breathing apparatus as part of the personal protective equipment ensemble and a  handheld biological agent assay tool. One area that came up that was a bit different – although not new – was some needs defined by the emergency medical technician community including systems to help keep EMTs safe as they ride in the back of an ambulance, ergonomic backboard, standoff tools to assess a patients’ health, better patient simulation training tools and predictive systems to better enable drivers to navigate in difficult traffic situations. I’ll provide a more complete list in a later blog.