South Metro Fire Rescue Leverages Plum-powered Portable Wireless For 911 Communications
Overview
As connectivity continues to grow in importance, it is vital for public safety entities to strategically invest in mobile broadband communication when opportunities arise. In the case of South Metro Fire Rescue, their use of Plum-powered mobile command units enabled them to keep their emergency response services running even when critical network components failed.
About
South Metro Fire Rescue (South Metro) supports 30 SMFR stations, and 6 other volunteer and combination departments across 1800 square miles in central Colorado providing emergency communications for over 1.6 million people. This area includes the full spectrum of topology from urban to wilderness, much of which has little to no wireless coverage.
Due to the broad topography and size of the region coupled with sparse wireless availability, South Metro operates a highly effective Incident Dispatch Team. The Incident Dispatch Team is made up of specially trained dispatchers that respond from the communication center to calls whose primary function is to provide communications for responders and units on-site. This allows the communication centers to resume normal service while the Incident Dispatch Team provides dedicated incident communications. Additionally, the Incident Dispatch Team provides ancillary support such as drone surveillance, and tactical mapping to improve recovery and rescue efforts. At the core of the Incident Dispatch Team is a Plum Case portable broadband kit that provides reliable voice and data communication across the large territory with few cellular service options.
Challenge
In addition to deploying a Plum portable broadband kit for the Incident Dispatch Team – South Metro now leverages Plum mobile broadband solutions as part of their Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) infrastructure (911 service). Since PSAP is used for emergency services multiple redundancies are essential for PSAP. Recently the South Metro lost their redundancies and needed an immediate broadband solution – they turned to Plum Laboratories.
The issue occurred during a planned infrastructure consolidation where one of the counties that South Metro previously used as backup PSAP consolidated their communication centers, essentially eliminating the redundancies. Rather than establishing a brick-and-mortar secondary backup communication center the South Metro established remote dispatch centers. Thanks to their experience with the Incident Dispatch Team, they have expertise with running remote PSAP. At the time of the incident, South Metro was running two mobile backup center “evacuation kits” that are meant to serve as backup command centers in the event of communication failure with the primary PSAP. These EVAC kits were running off mobile routers.
Solution
South Metro was able to quickly utilize a Plum Explorer from their Incident Dispatch Team truck to quickly establish a backup PSAP. At this point, the situation was triaged but not optimal. The Plum Case offered one redundancy, so they sought to bolster the infrastructure further. Additionally, the Plum Case they had on hand was the Plum Explorer, which is designed for ultimate portability, and although it was well-suited for the intended application, the EVAC kits would benefit from additional throughput.
Outcome
South Metro Fire Rescue can now provide better emergency services to Arapahoe, Douglas, and Jefferson counties by taking advantage of best-in-class mobile broadband technology to better connect emergency personnel with one another and with the people they are helping on scene. The mobile broadband capability provided by the Plum Case enabled South Metro to meet their 911 redundancy requirements in a short timeframe and with minimal disruption to their existing operations. Furthermore, their mobile-first approach first introduced as part of the Incident Dispatch Team essentially eliminates a single point of network failure by providing flexible redundancy instead of a single location.