HPWREN Public Safety History

Since 2001, HPWREN has collaborated to multiple public safety agencies, with a significant focus on the Cal Fire State of California firefighters. This is largely for operational purposes, such as providing connectivity to Incident Command Posts as they are being deployed for large wildfires, and connectivity to fire stations, camps, and air bases. In addition, HPWREN increases the situational awareness with its real-time environmental cameras and other sensors. Some of the meteorological sensors issue automated alerts of critical conditions to various public safety officials.

HPWREN, headquartered at the University of California, and as such a State of California entity, is providing high-speed and low-latency networking support to research, education, and public safety users. It operates on a cost recovery basis and is not a profit making corporation. The network topology can be found at http://hpwren.ucsd.edu/Topo/ with the primary web site being at http://hpwren.ucsd.edu.

HPWREN operates as a partnership project, with its users predominantly in rural and remote environments. In addition, HPWREN staff aim to educate its users about the technologies used, thus creating a collaborative technology and expertise transfer environment where the users can actively participate in the network's evolution, to collaboratively make it meet their programmatic requirements.

Additional flyers about HPWREN's Public Safety history are available for 2006, 2007, and 2010.

Summary

• High-speed and low-latency terrestrial microwave network
  - Audio/video and real-time data are impacted by the >500msec round-trip latencies of geostationary satellite networks
• The network is fully operational and ready to be expanded
• Proven high-reliability over the last 11+ years
  - Timely project team responsiveness to issues
  - Direct access to project staff, including the systems architect
  - San Diego local support
  - Project staff is working with users on end-to-end system/network issues
• Network bandwidth is managed by Quality of Service classes
  - Per-class data buffers can be re-allocated during emergencies
• User bandwidth is sufficient to support administrative work
  - example: filling out forms, payroll, training software, VTCs, etc.
• Project technology and expertise transfer
  - Educating users to extend the network and/or build their own
  - Education facilitates decision making processes
• Potential for collaborative development and integration of new technologies
  - air-ground communications
  - real-time sensors and sensor-based alerts
  - real-time environmental cameras
  - other new requirements for network integration
• Potential for participation in network research and development
• Flexibility to accommodate changes for the network environment
• Ad-hoc deployments (nomadic)
  - Firefighting Incident Command Posts
  - Other emergencies
• Joint planning for new network applications
  - Especially bandwidth-intensive ones

HPWREN connection to the 2003 Coyote Fire Incident Command Post