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Contact NICE: Customer hotline: (888) 217-0593 Customer support: (800) 642-3611 (800) NICE 611 email: Welcome@nice.com On the web: www.nice.com |
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NICE Systems, Inc. 950 Herndon Parkway Suite 250 Herndon, VA 20170 |
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| GLENDALE: INTEGRATED SOLUTION ESSENTIAL FOR QUALITY CONTROL, LIFE SAFETY |
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One of the most important decisions a public safety organization can make is choosing the right radio system. Reliable radio communications, both within an agency and across departments and jurisdictions, can be critical to coordinating life-saving response. In 2001, Glendale, California embarked on a plan to upgrade its citywide radio system. But Steve Hronek, the City's information services administrator, had an even more ambitious plan that would improve inter-agency communications and interoperability throughout the entire region. The endeavor, dubbed ICIS (Interagency Communications Interoperability System), would create a region-wide trunked radio network and ensure seamless radio communications throughout the Greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area. Glendale was the first city to go live on ICIS in 2002. Today, seven other cities are part of the ICIS JPA (Joint Powers Authority), operating on the shared Motorola SmartZone™ trunked radio network. Glendale is the hub for the radio network, and the City operates the ICIS NOC (network operations center) under Hronek's management. As the technical chairman for the ICIS JPA, Hronek is also responsible for ensuring the smooth technical operation of the network. "The performance of the radio network is the single most important thing to us," he said. "It has to be perfect all the time because lives depend on it." That's where the trunked radio recording system comes in. Each of the jurisdictions using the ICIS network has its own local solution for recording their emergency communications, but Hronek invested in a separate specialized NICE trunked radio recording system to capture and proactively analyze the communications across the entire region-wide network. "We purchased the system to record our own local (Glendale government) agencies," he said, "but also because we need to be able to identify problems and track them down. We try to be extremely proactive. Being the NOC for so many different cities, we need to keep on top of things." Hronek's recording system enables him to quickly research, troubleshoot and resolve potential problems that are reported by an operator or other user in the field, or come to his attention from monitoring calls. "It could be myriad problems," he said. "Most performance issues with subscriber equipment - mobile and portable radios - come about because the radio doesn't sound right to somebody. That could signify a microphone problem or a tuning problem in the radio. Digital radios need to be tuned very precisely," he added. Hronek's system employs a "full end-to-end digital approach" to capturing trunked radio communications, capturing audio for each of the ICIS Cities directly from the radio system DIUs. The system also decodes the ATIA (Air Traffic Information Access) stream to capture data associated with the transmissions (e.g., the unit IDs, talkgroup IDs, transmission times and dates, DIU number, system events and status messages, and other data). It's this data, coupled with the recording system's search and scenario reconstruction tools, that make it possible for Hronek to quickly pinpoint and remedy potential problems. If he receives a complaint of audio that's too low, too loud, distorted or garbled, Hronek can access and replay the relevant recordings to diagnose the problem. "I can get down to a specific unit ID, talkgroup, or a specific DIU," he said. "This is the only system that allows me to do all three. It really simplifies pulling out the specific data you're looking for - you can type in a talkgroup ID, a unit ID or a DIU ID and give it a timeframe, and it will pull up every transmission that correlates to your criteria." While some might see this level of quality control as overkill, Hronek doesn't. He contends that no less than perfection will do when you're dealing with emergency communications. "We want it perfect 24/7 and 365, and if it's not we want to know about it immediately, so we can make it perfect. It's a life safety issue," he said. "It has to be perfect all the time." LEARN MORE about NICE Systems' solutions for capturing and analyzing trunked radio communications at www.nice.com/products/multimedia/trunk_radio_solutions.php |
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