This article provides a brief report of a project to develop a system for maintaining and optimizing communications and operations in the public safety arena, including the vehicles of first responders such as ambulances, fire vehicles, and police cruisers.
This article provides a brief report on Project54, a proprietary collaborative research and development program, aimed at information delivery and integration. The authors describe their development of a system to maintain and optimize communications and operations in the public safety arena, known as Project54, which uses datacasting and cellular technologies to incorporate and embed mobile computing equipment and wireless networking into the patrol vehicles of the New Hampshire Department of Safety (NHDS). Project54 systems integrate all in-car electronic devices and systems, including software and user interfaces, to provide advanced support for the state police. The authors suggest that their two-way datacast environment, modeled in Project54, offers an inexpensive but broadly effective method for developing solutions to first responders’ need of the most current data possible while in the field.