DATACASTING FOR PUBLIC SAFETY DATACASTING FOR PUBLIC SAFETY IN OHIO - - PDF document

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DATACASTING FOR PUBLIC SAFETY IN OHIO DATACASTING FOR PUBLIC SAFETY IN OHIO

Presentation to members of the

Statewide Interoperable Executive Committee

January 23, 2019, with notes revised February, 2019 Dave Carwile Project Manager of the Ohio Digital EAS Project (OEAS)

Administrator/Ohio Educational Television Stations Inc. Senior Director/WOSU Public Media carwile.1@osu.edu

Presentation to members of the

Statewide Interoperable Executive Committee

January 23, 2019, with notes revised February, 2019 Dave Carwile Project Manager of the Ohio Digital EAS Project (OEAS)

Administrator/Ohio Educational Television Stations Inc. Senior Director/WOSU Public Media carwile.1@osu.edu

Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m Dave Carwile, here on behalf of the Ohio Educational Television Stations group in my role as Project Manager of OEAS. Thank you for a chance to talk about a first‐of‐its‐kind statewide emergency communications initiative in Ohio that, at least in part, has become a model for other states while influencing the planning for a new nationwide system. Since this technology has been featured in various public safety publications in recent months, I’m going to extend my comments more than a bit into how this technology is also being used in various locations to support first responder communication. Before we go any further, I’ll let you know I have a lot of information to share and a short time to do it so I’m going to break all the rules about how many points you can put on a Powerpoint slide since you all can read and I’ll just add additional

• comments. I’m not a vendor, only a user, and the only thing I’m sharing are ideas.

I’ll be happy to answer questions when we’re finished. Revision note: Some pages have video and document links concerning the topic on that page that will appear below the presenter notes. Video links will lead to posts

• n the OEAS Facebook page. Some of the additional comments were cut during the

presentation for the sake of time and the fact that there was already too much detail but I’ve added them back here.

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DEFINITIONS DEFINITIONS

• Think of a digital television signal as a pipe
• Bandwidth can be broken down to small, multiple pipes
• Some of those pipes carry TV channels, but remaining

bandwidth can be used for other, non-television data streams

• ATSC 3.0 is the next generation of TV technology, also

known, no surprise, as “Next Gen TV”

• Allows Ultra 4K over-the-air, higher color dynamic range,

better audio and more robust mobile reception

• Improved compression=more in the pipe= more room for

additional TV channels and datacasting streams

• Unfortunately, Next Gen is NOT backwards compatible.

Tuner dongles will be available and stations will operate both systems for at least five years.

I’ve learned the hard way that it’s best to make sure everyone is speaking the same language when it comes to technology, so here are a couple of definitions for items that I may make reference to: first, Digital TV. As many of you know, the wonderful thing about digital bandwidth is that it can be broken down into smaller segments for a variety of

• uses. Datacasting over digital broadcast signals makes use of that capability. TV signals

travel in proprietary MPEG‐2 video and audio formats, but datacasting uses standard Internet Protocol (IP). Next….If you haven’t heard about this, you probably will by the end of 2019. ATSC 3.0 is a new television technology that represents the same kind of generational change we had ten years ago when analog TV changed over to digital. Digital TV today still uses proprietary video formats (MPEG‐2 if you’re a techie), while Next Gen TV will be totally IP‐ based (Internet Protocol) We’ll be able to do more things with more space, whether that be more TV program channels, or encrypted data streams. Unlike digital TV in 2009, the FCC has not set deadlines for this conversion, but is requiring both formats (ATSC 1.0 and 3.0) to operate simultaneously for at least five years

• n different frequencies. However, tuning Next‐Gen in on existing TV sets will be easier

than the boxes required 10 years ago. By the way, this is the system that you may have heard about that will allow the alerting systems to “wake‐up” your TV at any hour in the event of an emergency. https://apts.org/news/videos/explanation‐new‐broadcast‐standard‐atsc Another definition, since I’ll use it later, is “Common Alerting Protocol” or “CAP” which is the “language” for messaging that FEMA adopted to make digital messaging interoperative.

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SO WHAT IS DATACASTING? SO WHAT IS DATACASTING?

• Datacasting is a way to transmit encrypted, addressable IP video

and data over broadcast TV signals. The targeted audience can then receive and decode the signal to view or save in the field.

• It takes advantage of a small portion of station’s bandwidth not

used for TV, but it is not visible on regular television sets.

• The new ATSC 3.0 TV compression standards mean more

bandwidth for datacasting use and robust mobile reception. but today’s 1.0 technology can and is already being employed for transporting OETS, Wireless Emergency Alerts and a variety of

• ther safety signals across the country.

If you have a first generation digital TV and an antenna and tune to any Ohio Public Television channel on subchannel nn.917, it may tell you something’s there, but report there is no (TV) signal. (nn being the actual channel of the PTV station that serves your area) By the way, the .917 shared channel designation was selected because Ohio is the 17th state and the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) that we transport from the

• riginators to the wireless companies already travel on .911.

My favorite new application for datacasting that we contributed to is being developed in California, it’s called a “Shake Alert” and gets on the air within three seconds of a seismic sensor detecting movement beneath the earth. There are also aspects of what other states call “the Ohio System” in their architecture. ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ See notes on the page 5 concerning actual and virtual channels. First generation

• ver‐the‐air digital TVs and old DTV converter boxes may show the actual channel

and the fact there is a something at .917 on that channel. However, any later TVs will only show the “virtual channel” and totally ignore the .917 subchannel since it is not identified as a TV service.

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Ohio Emergency Management Agency Ohio Emergency Management Agency

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With funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Ohio’s OEAS SYSTEM

PTV DATACASTING FOR PUBLIC ALTERTING

Now, let’s get into what’s already happening here in Ohio. Let me start out by stressing that the Ohio Digital Emergency Alerting System project was created by the partners you see on the screen, based on the needs voiced by emergency communicators themselves. It was a case of gathering available resources, such as the public stations, state fiber and bringing in vendors willing to write unique code for what we wanted to do in our state and deciding who was going to do it. The stations provide “the pipe,” but it’s the emergency professionals who decide what goes into it. Condensed history… with the tragedies at the turn of the century, followed by President Bush’s Executive Order 13407 concerning Public Alert and Warning Systems in 2006, FEMA stepped up its work on a digital‐concept, national system for local alerting, that we now know as IPAWS (for Integrated Public Alert and Warning System). However, redundancy and interoperability were not always top of mind in that development process. Getting back to the local origin story….Ohio’s Educational Television Stations listened to the needs of the notification professionals over a period of years, and when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting offered funds for this type of initiative, the stations were ready to bring the various interests together to actually design OEAS. The key

• perational partners include the Ohio Emergency Management Agency and the Broadcast

Educations Media Commission that works with OARnet to provide the secure fiber interconnection between the EMA and the PTV stations, with the support of the Ohio Association of Broadcasters and other groups. CPB provided about $360,000 as a grant to fund the project. We spent every penny.

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The Ohio Educational Television Stations and their repeater stations

(before repack channel changes)

Per FCC Coverage Maps

The Ohio Educational Television Stations and their repeater stations

(before repack channel changes)

Per FCC Coverage Maps

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The combined signals from Ohio Public Television stations cover just about all of the state, although I’ll apologize that this is an old map and since the FCC has reassigned most of our stations and translators (repeaters) stations to new frequencies, some of the circles will be changing a bit… most likely we’ll see more

• verlap and even better coverage in the fringe areas.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Additional Background on Digital TV: Digital television has both actual frequency assignments where you can find their signals, as well as the ability to broadcast legacy “virtual” channel information. For example, here in Columbus, WBNS‐TV “10‐TV” actually broadcasts on the frequency assigned as channel 21, but when your TV finds that frequency, the metadata in the signal tells your TV that it is looking at channel 10. So, over the next three years, when you see announcements to “rescan” your TV, it’s because a station or stations in your area are approaching or at the deadline to move to their frequencies and it’s time to tell your TV to find the new locations in the TV spectrum. Important: This only applies to over‐the‐air viewing with a TV. If you watch via satellite or cable TV, you will not be effected since that company has already rescanned for you. However, cable and satellite systems also strip out the WEA and OEAS datacast info.

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THE OEAS PUBLIC ALERTNET SYSTEM: THE OEAS PUBLIC ALERTNET SYSTEM:

• What it does: Embeds public-facing alert and messaging content in the signals of all
• f Ohio’s public television and translator stations for delivery to EAS LP Stations
• What it achieves: Provides a redundant, digital delivery path for Federal and State

IPAWS Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) EAS alerts and messages to the stations and entities that deliver them to the public. OEAS does not broadcast to the public.

• Who runs it: Public television stations provide “the pipe”, but the Ohio EMA decides

what goes into it. Ohio PTV stations also delivers WEA via datacast.

• Cybersecurity: Avoids the risks of Tier 3 public (last-mile) internet and wireless LTE

where congestion, failure or intrusion can occur

• Scalable : Concurrently transports any type of IP-based messages, including live

video, encrypted and targeted content. OEAS is now using <.01% of a PTV signal.

• “One-way Internet”: Provides an alternative method of delivering information and

video when two-way communication is not required

Let me clear up a common point of confusion… you will never hear or see “OEAS” itself. OEAS is not a new alerting system, only a secure architecture using datacasting over a TV signal to insure the delivery of emergency alerts and messaging (created in existing and future systems) to the TV and radio stations that broadcast them and the agencies that use them in other ways. FEMA now agrees that it’s better to get a critical message twice than not at all… especially when there is the possibility of congestion, interference or even failure with other pathways. However, working on the public side, our “prime directive” is not to do anything that would activate the public EAS system twice for the same alert. Speaking of Wireless Emergency Alerts, as more of you are gaining access to systems to create WEA and EAS CAP message, please make sure you understand the difference between the two. An alert over EAS will go out over all of the stations that broadcast in a multi‐county area, while a much shorter WEA message is very geo‐targeted. A couple of months ago, an Ohio entity issued what would have appeared to be a highly targeted message for WEA caused it to go out as EAS, and viewers and listeners in at least six counties were being warned about a man with a gun, with no indication where he actually was. This kind

• f error, plus multiple EAS alerts for one event, only encourages the public to ignore emergency messages.

When we briefed FEMA on OEAS, they told us that message security was the weak point in most other alerting proposals. Many of us remember a couple of years ago when someone got into the legacy EAS system in Chicago and issued a “Zombie” alert. (To my knowledge, no one has ever hacked a TV signal

• nce it has been broadcast!)

I liked the “one‐way internet” description because if you ask yourself if instead of everyone trying to key into a talk group during an emergency, are there people who only need to hear and/or see what is

• happening. Or with the potential of delivering information as files, those who don’t need or shouldn’t have

access? Datacasting can be a resource to help avoid LMR systems being swamped when multiple talkgroups are dragged into a non‐local area resulting in “system busy” situations.

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Here’s a very basic look at how OEAS works today. The national, state and local sources contribute the alert and messaging content. (We are not providing back‐up for the Weather Service via OEAS at this time because they didn’t move to the standard CAP messaging format as promised, which could result in multiple EAS activations for the same message. Recent FEMA reports have strongly encouraged that to happen.) The content comes into the Ohio EMA (just down the hall from this meeting room), is aggregated into a single IP stream, then translated to TV format over IP, then pushed out

• ver the secure state fiber system to all seven public television master control rooms

across the state when they it is multiplexed into the signals of the transmitters they feed. That OEAS data stream arrives at the receiver location where a digital TV tuner pulls out the nn.917 channel and, through a direct connection, delivers it to a unit that decodes it back to the original alert format. That unit acts as a “cache” server to store the messages. The legacy EAS units at broadcast stations then “poll” the OEAS unit every 10 seconds, using exactly the same protocol as they do with FEMA’s IPAWS servers. Actually, if an alert is sent to both IPAWS and the Ohio EMA/OEAS, it will likely make it out to the receivers more quickly over OEAS. There is one OEAS signal that is sent out to all of the stations for broadcast. Because CAP and EAS messages contain universal location codes (divided by counties here in Ohio), we rely on the existing EAS equipment to parse the messages it receives and ignore the codes not in their service areas, just as they do with the traditional daisy‐chain delivered messages today. Messages delivered over the system don’t necessarily have to be in the EAS/IPAWS format, any content, open or encrypted, that can be translated into IP can be delivered

• ver the system to receivers that can decode them.

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OEAS WORKS! OEAS WORKS!

 Has been in successful operation since

December, 2016

 Receiver sets deployed or allocated to 48

State and Local Primary EAS stations, PTV stations and select county EMA/HS offices

 System received national recognition from

FEMA and the FCC, with states of California, Tennessee and others currently adapting aspects of the OEAS technology for their own needs

 OEAS concepts are included in the

Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) alerting report to the FCC and in the initial draft of an Advanced Alerting System for ATSC 3.0

OEAS has been a success. In the picture you see the racks with both the older EAS and CAP equipment here at the EMA along with the OEAS content collection, aggregator and confidence monitor units in the lower rack. The small, white ATSC 1.0 TV tuner is perched at the very top while the microphone used by the Highway Patrol to record Amber Alerts sits in front of the phone. While we’d like to have the cash for additional equipment redundancy and to provide receivers to every county, we’re pleased to say that we developed, distributed and activated the OEAS system as it is for just over a third of a million

• dollars. Not as a criticism, but as you might guess, more recent datacast systems

drawing on our success from vendors are much more expensive and have not necessarily been custom‐built. While we’re talking about the influence that OEAS has had or will have with systems in other states, we’ll note that Monroe Electronics, our vendor and the manufacturer of the black and red Digital Alert System units in the picture, was so pleased with what we developed that they decided to include the Ohio decoding software in the base operating system for all of their alerting products. While the majority of broadcasters in Ohio likely use the blue Sage System boxes as their primary EAS receivers to poll our OEAS decoders, cable companies and others using DAS EAS equipment only need to connect a digital TV tuner with an IP output to allow their box to act as an OEAS receiver (their legacy EAS operation is not effected). When all stations have moved to ATSC 3.0, we’ll only have to replace the tuners to be ready for Advanced Emergency Alerting.

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The OEAS system is what we’d deemed public‐facing. We push out the same signal for everyone and the receivers sites use the location information in the message to determine whether or not to pay attention or see it as a duplicate. If you wanted to buy an IP‐output TV receiver and a DAS decoder, anyone could monitor the alerts and messages. But there is the other side of the coin, which we’ll call the Secure side, utilized by First Responders and Public Safety mangers. It’s the side where information can be encrypted and targeted down to specific groups, or even to specific receivers, laptops, and, as we move forward… regular smartphones. From this broader view, I’d like to take a few minutes to talk about how other public TV stations are partnering with the public safety community to utilize datacasting

• today. You may have heard or read about some of these projects.

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(sequenced images) To begin….cell systems, wireless 4/5g and Land‐Mobile‐Radio systems are excellent under most conditions and improving every day, but even with priority access or coordinated talk groups, no system can be built to handle everyone trying to use it at once… It’s just too expensive.

• 1. Such was the case in New York City soon after 9‐11 when a small plane hit an

apartment building. The internet, phone and cell systems in NY crashed because that’s where everybody went first.

• 2. More recently, Hurricane Harvey took its best shot at the Texas coast on August

25th, 2017 and not only was everyone trying to use it, the infrastructure was gone.

• 3. Nearly three days later, cell and other sites were still down, (but no TV

broadcasters went off during the disaster). In the middle of a disaster with lives at stake, a promise to bring in portable towers once the roads are clear rings

• hollow. You need it now.
• 4. Only a couple of years ago, we had wildfires in Tennessee that no one ever

expected could happen. This past summer in California… I don’t know if you can see the cell tower in the upper left hand corner, but I don’t need to explain what

• ccurred with it. Bottom line… with no terrestrial infrastructure, even the best

communication system isn’t there when it is needed the most.

• 5. If you think that Ohio is immune from unexpected events, recall the “Deracho”

that blew through the state in the summer of 2012, leaving over one million Ohioans without power, many for more than a week.

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PUBLIC SAFETY DATACAST CONSIDERATIONS PUBLIC SAFETY DATACAST CONSIDERATIONS

Key Issues: Broadcast is the most efficient way to deliver alerts and

warnings to large audiences “one to many”

Multi-modal – wireless, internet and broadcast, etc. – are the

key to effective notifications and public safety communications

Infrastructure must be resilient to withstand the event Encrypted/Targetable Public Safety information interoperability Secure information to responders, including building blueprints,

drone and ground video, etc, in addition to voice or text.

1. “One to many” is the very definition of broadcasting, although development of technology allows us to narrow that down to just a single receiver. 2. Since the early days of public notification during the cold war, (remember Conelrad triangles on your AM radio?) audio messages have been primarily delivered point‐to‐point over a wide area using what is not so affectionally called the “daisy‐chain” concept. Someone would broadcast an alert, some

• ther station would monitor it, record it and pass it on. That’s great, except if someone fell asleep or

when broadcast stations were no longer required to staff their control rooms 24 hours a day. Messages were not getting passed on, not to mention the sound quality of a message by the time you hit the end of a chain of stations. With digital messaging, you can build a “web” of sources, both for public‐facing and first responder systems. Datacasting is not a new emergency system, just one secure way to make sure the information gets there. 3. We talked about infrastructure a few moments ago, but I’ll note that with the FCC selecting the PTV stations as the overlay backbone to deliver WEA messages to wireless providers, it fully funded uninterruptable power systems, generators and the capacity for a minimum three‐day supply of generator fuel, on‐site at the Ohio PTV stations. We even provided an additional fuel tank for our network headquarters. 4. This is an opinion on my part, but I doubt many would disagree. Most of the projects or programs, except for an upcoming example we’ll discuss, are single city or metropolitan areas. The systems are interoperable within the areas they serve, but without standards established at the state level, do not take the desirability of working with future adjacent systems into consideration. Moving forward, the most effective and cost‐effective systems will begin with planning on the state level, establishing the parameters for local plans and local, station‐by‐station origination and distribution. 5. Not only should information be delivered through multiple channels, any one‐way system must be capable of delivering a content in a variety of formats. Digital technology now allows us to leap past the old mentality that communication systems should be designed for a single purpose.

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DATACAST USES OUTSIDE OF OHIO DATACAST USES OUTSIDE OF OHIO

• DHS Science & Technology Directorate is working with

America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) on Datacasting projects and demonstrations, including:

• Adams County, Indiana
• Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security
• City of Houston, Texas

We’ve only been talking about Ohio’s Public Television stations, but any TV signal can carry datacast

• content. However, on both the national level and here in Ohio (with OEAS), the public stations have

stepped up because public service is a key part of our mission . As we move toward the Next Gen TV era, commercial station groups are working furiously on developing datacasting applications with the goal of increasing their revenue. That’s fine, that’s what they’re there to do. But public stations have been taking the lead on public safety systems of all types, because “that’s what we’re all about.” There are a number of instances outside of Ohio where datacasting where public stations are using datacasting, but lets take a look at just a few examples of the demonstrations, pilots and systems that you may have heard about recently. In most of the recent initiatives, Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate has been working on these projects with American’s Public Television Stations organization (the national version of the Ohio group that I serve as Administrator for) and in some cases, a commercial datacast equipment vendor (SpectraRep) has also been involved. ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Here are some links concerning datacasting. For even more, search DHS Science and Technology Datacasting for videos and other information. file://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/1015_OIC_Datacasting‐FactSheet_180808‐508.pdf https://www.dhs.gov/science‐and‐technology/news/2018/09/13/snapshot‐datacasting‐instant‐ situational‐awareness

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INDIANA – DATACASTING FOR SCHOOL SAFETY INDIANA – DATACASTING FOR SCHOOL SAFETY

On October 24, 2018, a simulated school shooting incident was conducted at the Adams Central Community Schools in Grant County, Indiana, where there are unique rural area issues

• The exercise was sponsored by DHS S&T, in collaboration with the Indiana

Integrated Public Safety Commission, Adams County Sheriff, Adams County Emergency Management Agency, Adams County School District, and public television station WFWA, Fort Wayne, which serves Adams County.

• Datacasting over WFWA was used to share critical information from the simulated

incident with first responders and public safety officials from multiple agencies.

• The information included live video from multiple cameras, school blueprints and
• ther information essential for responding to an actual school shooting threat.
• Officials were impressed with the sharing across agencies and improved

interoperability including • Police • Fire • EMS • Hospital • Bomb Squad

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Late last year, just across the border, Indiana’s public broadcasters joined safety

• fficials in a simulated school shooting incident drill. Most of the key information is

here on the screen. ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ You can learn more from the video Indiana’s public broadcasters posted on YouTube in January (thanks Ken). Even though it opens with the title “ATSC 3.0”, it begins with a recap of the shooting demo. https://www.facebook.com/289822388350967/videos/324729384819752/

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• Last summer, the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security

announced a $2 million grant to the six members of Tennessee’s Public Television Station Council to fund a pilot project to deliver private, secure communication between first responders and their management teams in case of an emergency

• r natural disaster.
• The grant was offered following the Smoky Mountain Wildfires in 2016 where 14

lives were lost

• While a joint public safety advisory committee will steer development of specific

deployment and usage plans, the grant will be used to install datacasting equipment and software to deliver encrypted public safety video, files, alerts and

• ther data along with public-facing alerts (based in part on OEAS).
• Pilot to be completed within 30 months, with initial operations within six months of

the grant.

This was actually money that the state already had sitting in an emergency fund and the Governor decided to use for this purpose in response to the deadly fires. Interestingly enough, this was not a process that I or most of you who write grants are used to. There was no proposal or plan, just a pot of money and the mandate to use it to create a datacast‐based system. The state’s Public Television community had been at table with the emergency and safety groups and all are working collectively in deciding how to build a state‐based system that provides service at a local level. It will include both first responder and public alerting aspects. We had provided them all the plans and documentation we developed for the OEAS system some time ago, although we were not aware of what they were going to do with them at that point. They’re just looking at the best way to structure origination points and how to link them to local public safety operations… one main center, several regional headquarters, or at the individual stations. They’re also looking at how to connect the state system together… something that is not a problem for us in Ohio with the state fiber system already in place. _______ I’ll offer one correction though…. Their announcements have proclaimed that it will be the first state‐wide datacast system, ignoring that Ohio can already claim that distinction. www.rrmediagroup.com/News/NewsDetails/NewsID/17422/

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CITY OF HOUSTON Police, Fire & Homeland Security

• Best example of a working public safety, city/regional datacast system

paired with an LTE system.

• Multi-Discipline, Multi-Jurisdiction Tool “Another tool in the tool box”
• KUHT-TV signal provides a larger coverage area than Cellular/Radios
• Planned Large Scale/Complex Events
• Unplanned Daily Events
• Wildland, Structure, Hazmat, Rescue
• Allows for Sharing Multiple Tools
• Cell Phone App, Portable Cameras, Web-based Data

In my opinion, the Houston architecture is the best working example of a large‐ scale, public safety datacast system, developed in a partnership with Homeland Security and Johns Hopkins University, and tied to a 4g wireless system to provide assured service. Houston District Fire Chief Jeff Cook called it another valuable tool in the tool box, both for planned events and the unexpected, large and small. In its construction, it integrated a variety of technologies (datacast, LTE and existing LMR) to build a system providing redundancy in the distribution of critical content and providing two‐way communication.

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Houston’s system uses datacasting with mobile command posts, cell phone cameras, drone cameras and data files with critical information to:

• Stream video from Divisions to Command Post
• Stream video from incident scenes to EOC/Forward Command Post
• Stream video updates of real time conditions to EOC
• Stream video from scene to responding specialty units (HazMat,

Technical Rescue)

• Send Safety Data Sheets to responders or incident command post
• Send maps, floorplans, and other files to incident command post
• Send alerts/emergency messages to field responders (active shooter on

scene, shelter in place, etc)

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CITY OF HOUSTON

Here are a few of the ways Houston is using datacast technology to effectively support first responders and public safety activities, working with Houston Public Media. (Thanks to the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council for information from a recent “Datacasting for Public Safety” webinar.)

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• Super Bowl 51
• The World Series
• NCAA Final Four
• Houston Marathon
• Other Large Crowd Events
• Large Fire Incidents
• Hazmat Incidents
• Technical Rescue
• Other Emergencies
• In just the past two years, the Houston datacast system has been been put to

the test in both planned events…. … and unplanned events…. ….not to mention Hurricane Harvey ‐‐‐‐‐‐ From the OEAS Facebook page, Here’s a video from Houston Public Media (KUHT‐University of Houston) talking about datacasting and new technology: https://www.facebook.com/289822388350967/videos/1919769048132581/ Here’s another from PBS, promoting the role of Public Television in public safety: https://www.facebook.com/289822388350967/videos/300579633990881/

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CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

• Demand for data is growing and video information is becoming an expectation.
• Rural coverage and urban wireless capacity are expanding, but there are still

practical limits and the potential for congestion and failure.

• Despite the much improved management of coordinated LMR public safety voice

systems, they have their limitations as well.

• The best systems will utilize multiple networks to assure availability and

distribution of information, but for both human safety and economic reasons, each network must be interoperable with the others as well as within its own class.

• Consider how these systems, including FirstNet, could deal with:
• rural coverage issues
• congestion relief for LMR
• ptimization for data delivery
• ne-to-many delivery as a way to relieve capacity issues for the others

New technologies, including advanced LTE solutions and datacasting, are joining

• ther networked systems in addressing the need for additional information for both

public use and for first responder needs. MARCS has made enormous strides in facilitating and upgrading interoperability, but it too is evolving as expectations change with technology providing new

• pportunities.

When FEMA first unveiled the IPAWS CAP notification system, it put all of its eggs in

• ne basket, to borrow a phrase, and that internet only delivery. We learned they

had never even looked at what happened with the public internet and wireless systems during an emergency in designing IPAWS. Things have changed. Today FEMA is very much encouraging diverse systems delivery on the public side. I don’t have enough knowledge of how FirstNet will work, but as the first responders in California, Texas and Florida will tell you, it pays to have more than one basket to make sure the eggs get there.

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QUESTIONS?

Dave Carwile Ohio Educational Television Stations / WOSU Public Media 614-292-9567 carwile.1@osu.edu

Some content provided courtesy National Public Safety Telecommunications Council

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I know this has been a lot of information in a short time, but if you have questions, please feel free to send me an email or call. Thank you for your time. (Evolution of Emergency Broadcasting in Ohio slide follows) 19

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