Motorola launches public safety vision

Motorola Solutions has launched is Next Generation Mobile Intelligence ecosystem.

Motorola Solutions Australia has launched its Next Generation Mobile Intelligence ecosystem, which ties together multiple devices, communications modes and data sources to provide enhanced situational awareness.

At a ceremony to inaugurate the Public Safety Innovation Centre at the company’s Melbourne headquarters on 9 November, senior Motorola executives were joined by industry partners, public sector users and the Victorian Innovation Minister to launch the new system.

“It’s not just about innovation, it’s also about collaboration,” Steve Crutchfield, managing director of Motorola Solutions Australia and New Zealand, told the audience.

“Today, we’re bringing to life the culmination of a vision that has been underway for some time, and importantly, born here in Australia, and [which] is now part of the global blueprint within the [Motorola Solutions] Chief Technology Office,” said Crutchfield.

“This vision is dealing with, in large part, the extreme volumes of data that surround us in our everyday lives, and the changing ways in which we communicate and collaborate. A large part of that is in and around the pool of social media, that surrounds us in our work life and our personal lives as well,” he added.

“We call this vision Next Generation Mobile Intelligence (NGMI), which is taking this large volume of data and turning it into… real information or intelligence that is useful for people like first responders out in the market, putting it in the hands of the right users, on the right device for their particular purpose, over the best available network where [the user] is physically located at that point in time.”

Prabhakar Rajagopal, the company’s VP for Solutions and Services, APAC and the Middle East, has led the development of NGMI.

“I think there is a difference between being a fast adopter and being an actual innovator. I think there is a lot of opportunity in Australia. It’s a fertile ground, and that’s why we are leading it with the NGMI,” said Rajagopal.

Demonstrated vision

Greg Bouwmeester, Motorola Solutions Australia’s general manager of business development, led a demonstration that took the form of a simulated hold-up at a local venue. He showed how the NGMI ecosystem — which combines Motorola and third-party solutions — could be used to seamlessly link a CAD system, two ‘officers’ in the field (one with an iPad, the other with a Samsung smartphone), standard LMR radios, plus Motorola’s ‘police car of the future’ and various other sources of data.

It was really quite impressive. A map showed where each officer or asset was located, updating automatically as they moved. Messages sent to or from one device showed up on all the others, keeping everyone in the loop. Information was pulled from intelligence databases; vision was streamed and still images displayed from the car as well as from security cameras; a floor plan of the building was accessed and sent to the various devices; possible accomplices were spotted in the area using facial recognition technology; a passing ‘off-duty police officer’ was able to offer support via his authorised mobile device. Social media could be consulted too.

Motorola Solutions' 'police car of the future' demonstrator.

All up, it presented a seemingly very easy-to-use system for quickly assessing and controlling a public safety incident.

It was also apparent — and Bouwmeester pointed this out — that the system could just as easily be used in a variety of private sector environments where safety incidents are a concern, such as mining and transportation.

But the NGMI solution goes even further. Through collaboration with third-party providers such as New Zealand’s Wynyard, the overall solution enables users to access and assess data before events occur. For instance, police officers can consult maps that show them historical crime hotspots in their area. But not only that, data analytics enables the system to predict where the next crime might occur, enabling officers to proactively patrol locations of concern.

Power to the frontline

Present at the ceremony was Julian Cross, senior business consultant at Gridstone, an Australian software house that is at the forefront of mobile emergency incident management solutions with multiple significant deployments across a number of emergency services and policing agencies, including the Queensland Police Force.

Critical Comms asked him about the sort of efficiency gains users could expect from the new world of mobile intelligence.

“There are quite a number of studies that are currently being undertaken with Queensland Police, but there’s anecdotal evidence in terms of, for example, random drug testing,” he said. “Previously, the officers on patrol were able to do somewhere in the region of about seven to 10 per day on paper, and then have to go back [to the police station] and fill it all in.

“They’re now recording close to 100 per officer per day. The Queensland Police Force itself is talking about [a saving of] 30 minutes administration time ... per officer per shift. You look at a frontline police force of 7000 and you think about 30 minutes of officer time per shift, [and] you have a massive increase in the opportunity to help people on the ground.

“What our applications give, first and foremost, is situational awareness, and that’s where it’s being looked at — not only in the frontline policing, but also in areas such as child protection and domestic violence,” added Cross.

“And that’s the key here — a really good application ecosystem that manages the device, that manages the data streams that you have — whether that be through CAD or whether that be instantaneous from all the resources on the ground.

“But situational awareness is where the real power of mobile technology comes in, because all of a sudden you have not just the officer facing the situation, but all of the officers in the vicinity able to team up, and participate and understand and have [the kind of] insights that just 12 months ago no-one had.”

Innovation is the way forward

The Victorian Minister for Small Business, Innovation & Trade, Philip Dalidakis, was on hand to officially open the centre and speak about the technology sector in Victoria.

“There are a lot of people around the country talking ‘innovation’ but not doing anything about it,” he said.

Commenting on innovation in general, and using the federal coalition government’s nbn plan as an example to criticise, the Labor minister said that politicians who “want to talk the talk, need to be prepared to walk the walk”.

“One of the reasons why I was only too happy to come out here today was to thank all of you in this room for what you’re doing, because you’re living it; you’re absolutely the very breathing embodiment of what we’re trying to do and create and foster.”

Left to right: Steve Crutchfield, Managing Director, Motorola Solutions Australia and New Zealand; Victorian Minister for Small Business, Innovation & Trade, Philip Dalidakis; and Paul Steinberg, Motorola Solutions’ Chief Technology Officer.

Motorola Solutions’ US-based chief technology officer, Paul Steinberg, highlighted the importance of broadband innovation for the future of public safety and enterprise industries.

“It’s a critical time for public safety and industry in Australia when constrained resources, costs and growing expectations from stakeholders and customers are adding pressure on performance,” Steinberg said.

“Sustained, mobile broadband innovation is the way forward for public safety organisations and businesses to capture the data sources that are growing rapidly all around us — putting it to better use to reach higher levels of safety and productivity.

“That’s the challenge that Motorola Solutions and its growing community of technology partners will be collaborating on together at our new Australian Innovation Centre.”