Supported by over 90 illustrations, this unique book provides a detailed examination of the subject, focusing on the use of voice, data, and video systems for public safety and emergency response. This practical resource makes in-depth recommendations spanning technical, planning, and procedural approaches to provide efficient public safety response performance. You find covered the many approaches used to achieve interoperability, including a synopsis of the enabling technologies and systems intended to provide radio interoperability. Featuring specific examples nationwide, the book takes you from strategy to proper implementation, using enterprise architecture, systems engineering, and systems integration planning.

With the increasing need for more effective and efficient responses to man-made and natural public safety threats, the necessity for improved private mobile and commercial wireless digital communication systems has become apparent. This one-of-a-kind resource describes today's public safety communication requirements and radio systems from a technical perspective, and shows you how communication systems are evolving to meet the growing demands of multimedia wireless applications.

Every day in cities and towns across the Nation, emergency response personnel respond to incidents of varying scope and magnitude. Their ability to communicate in real time is critical to establishing command and control at the scene of an emergency, to maintaining event situational awareness, and to operating overall within a broad range of incidents. However, as numerous after-action reports and national assessments have revealed, there are still communications deficiencies that affect the ability of responders to manage routine incidents and support responses to natural disasters, acts of terrorism, and other incidents. Recognizing the need for an overarching emergency communications strategy to address these shortfalls, Congress directed the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of Emergency Communications (OEC) to develop the first National Emergency Communications Plan (NECP). Title XVIII of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (6 United States Code 101 et seq.), as amended, calls for the NECP to be developed in coordination with stakeholders from all levels of government and from the private sector. In response, DHS worked with stakeholders from Federal, State, local, and tribal agencies to develop the NECP—a strategic plan that establishes a national vision for the future state of emergency communications. To realize this national vision and meet these goals, the NECP established the following seven objectives for improving emergency communications for the Nation's Federal, State, local, and tribal emergency responders: 1. Formal decision-making structures and clearly defined leadership roles coordinate emergency communications capabilities. 2. Federal emergency communications programs and initiatives are collaborative across agencies and aligned to achieve national goals. 3. Emergency responders employ common planning and operational protocols to effectively use their resources and personnel. 4. Emerging technologies are integrated with current emergency communications capabilities through standards implementation, research and development, and testing and evaluation. 5. Emergency responders have shared approaches to training and exercises, improved technical expertise, and enhanced response capabilities. 6. All levels of government drive long-term advancements in emergency communications through integrated strategic planning procedures, appropriate resource allocations, and public-private partnerships. 7. The Nation has integrated preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery capabilities to communicate during significant events. The NECP also provides recommended initiatives and milestones to guide emergency response providers and relevant government officials in making measurable improvements in emergency communications capabilities. The NECP recommendations help to guide, but do not dictate, the distribution of homeland security funds to improve emergency communications at the Federal, State, and local levels, and to support the NECP implementation. Communications investments are among the most significant, substantial, and long-lasting capital investments that agencies make; in addition, technological innovations for emergency communications are constantly evolving at a rapid pace. With these realities in mind, DHS recognizes that the emergency response community will realize this national vision in stages, as agencies invest in new communications systems and as new technologies emerge.

During the last decade, interoperability has emerged as a vivid research area in electronic business and electronic governance, promising a significant increase in productivity and efficiency of information systems, enterprises and administrations. Interoperability in Digital Public Services and Administration: Bridging E-Government and E-Business provides the latest research findings such as theoretical foundations, principles, methodologies, architectures, technical frameworks, international policy, standardization and case studies for the achievement of interoperability within the provision of digital services, from administration and businesses toward the user citizens and enterprises.

The economic and political stakes in the current heated debates over “openness” and open standards in the Internet's architecture. Openness is not a given on the Internet. Technical standards—the underlying architecture that enables interoperability among hardware and software from different manufacturers—increasingly control individual freedom and the pace of innovation in technology markets. Heated battles rage over the very definition of “openness” and what constitutes an open standard in information and communication technologies. In Opening Standards, experts from industry, academia, and public policy explore just what is at stake in these controversies, considering both economic and political implications of open standards. The book examines the effect of open standards on innovation, on the relationship between interoperability and public policy (and if government has a responsibility to promote open standards), and on intellectual property rights in standardization—an issue at the heart of current global controversies. Finally, Opening Standards recommends a framework for defining openness in twenty-first-century information infrastructures. Contributors discuss such topics as how to reflect the public interest in the private standards-setting process; why open standards have a beneficial effect on competition and Internet freedom; the effects of intellectual property rights on standards openness; and how to define standard, open standard, and software interoperability.