Control rooms
“We’re seeing the 101 service almost
become a community advisory service
as opposed to calling 101 to speak to
the police about a particular matter.”
is rise in non-emergency calls is
quite troubling for operators, as they
have to accommodate them without
it impacting on their ability to answer
emergency calls.
Another factor is ageing. Isherwood
notes that by 2036, 24 per cent
of the UK’s population will be of
pensionable age. “e demand on
control rooms to help vulnerable
people will only rise, so an ageing
population needs to be seriously
considered as part of any strategy.”
Breaking down silos
Organised crime does not respect
regional and national boundaries. In
the UK, this was recently brought into
focus in an article in e Guardian,
titled ‘Organised crime in the UK is
bigger than ever before. Can the police
catch up?’, which was largely based on
an interview with Lynne Owens, head
of the National Crime Agency (NCA).
It is well worth a read, particularly her
assertion that a fragmented policing
model has left Britain with little or
no “capability to respond” to modern
global criminals.
While some would expect this
to prompt further consolidation,
the reverse is occurring, as seen by
the imminent end of Warwickshire
and West Mercia police’s strategic
alliance. is ‘divorce’ has created an
unusual situation for Saab, as it will
require a single deployment of its
SAFE command and control system
operating over two separate control
rooms to be “pulled apart”.
“In Europe, just as in the UK,
we’re seeing criminal activity and the
challenges that the emergency services
face becoming less localised,” says
Glyn Boswell, technical director at
Saab Public Safety UK. “So, the ability
to exchange information and work to
common operating practices is seen as
something that has to happen.”
Robert Nitsch, vice-president of
to help customers be more selfsu
cient where they wish to be so, and
to that extent we’re trying to give them
more self-service tools in our nextgeneration
solutions”.
ere is also the shift away from
control room operators having
to continually act as the bridges
between software packages through
time-consuming copy and pasting. I
recently visited Lincolnshire Police’s
control room, which will be the rst
in the country to migrate to Motorola
Solutions’ cloud-based integrated
CommandCentral Control Room
Solution (CRS). is as a unied and
highly scalable platform that integrates
multiple functions is expected to
eliminate the need for this kind of
drudgery, freeing operators to perform
more high-value tasks and increase the
number of calls that are addressed in
one session without the need to involve
or deploy police ocers.
As operators can be blitzed by
massive amounts of data from a variety
of sources – including video and
social media feeds – many vendors are
working to ensure they only receive
relevant information in an easy-todigest
and intuitive way.
For example, Boswell describes the
way data can be captured even before
the rst words are exchanged, as the
location of the caller can be determined
often thanks to Advanced Mobile
Location, which can provide vital
context, such as whether the caller is
in an area with high levels of antisocial
behaviour. e map showing
the caller’s location can then act as a
focal point. en as the incident type
is determined (“SAFE is looking for
appropriate resources to deploy”) and
the operator collects more information,
they are presented with warning
markers on things such as whether
there are known rearms at an address.
“So, SAFE is kind of acting as a copublic
safety at Frequentis, highlights
the work of research project EPISECC
(Establish a Pan-European Information
Space to Enhance seCurity of Citizens),
which ran from June 2016-November
2017 with a future integrated crisis and
disaster response capacity in mind (see
https://episecc.eu).
Another problem for vendors and
their customers is the lack of interface
standardisation. ICCRA launched a
project to address this in 2017, and
Prater says while its initial ambition
was thwarted for a variety of reasons,
the need for greater interoperability has
not gone away; in fact “it’s probably
only getting worse and ICCRA
does need to pick up on that again.
Unfortunately it’s a lack of capacity
today, but it hasn’t gone o our radar.”
It’s all about workows
Control room operators face something
of an uphill struggle, perhaps made
worse by the way public nances have
been stretched. Fortunately, the vendors
that support them haven’t been idle.
“If you go back a number of years,
police forces had to modify their
operational procedures to t the
control room software solution they
were using,” says Saab’s Boswell. “Now
we’re seeing more truly modularised
systems that are workow-driven, and
those workows are congurable by
end-userorganisations.”
He also says products are available
that aren’t designed for specic niches.
For example, Saab’s SAFE system
supports a “pick and mix” approach –
“you choose the capabilities that you
want to integrate into your workow.
For example, a prison would use
more of SAFE’s capability for lift
control and door access, whereas that’s
of less interest to a police force.”
Hexagon’s Prater says his company
recognises that given budgetary
constraints, “it’s incumbent on vendors
Control room
operators are
increasingly
having to grapple
with nonemergency
and an increase
in demand,
driven in part by
members of the
public starting
to communicate
via non-voice
methods, such as
texts or web chat
Competing technology
providers have made
integration increasingly
difcult for agencies due
to a closed architecture
approach
calls
18 www.criticalcomms.com January 2019
/episecc.eu)
/www.criticalcomms.com
/episecc.eu)
/www.criticalcomms.com