ICCRA sets out control rooms challenges

The newly formed International Critical Control Rooms Alliance (ICCRA) has launched its first project — to drive the standardisation of critical control room technical interfaces for public protection and disaster relief (PPDR) organisations.

There is currently no common interface standard between the telecoms solution — whatever it may be — and the PPDR organisation. This has led to a myriad of proprietary approaches, which in some cases can result in the subperformance of PPDR operations.

“Advances in ICT and related citizen expectation assume that PPDR organisations must surely possess the capability to receive and deliver information within their community freely and quickly in order to deliver the best possible service. This is not the case,” said ICCRA Chair Peter Prater.

“This first ICCRA project is concerned with driving the development of essential standards for interfacing critical control rooms — particularly those related to PPDR operations — with each other, their international colleagues and the telecoms solutions on which they rely.”

In the first round of standardisation, ICCRA will focus on the following:

• Emergency call handling and management: between emergency call receipt centres and critical control rooms, between emergency call receipt centres, and between critical control rooms;
• Transferring incident forms and other data messages between critical control rooms; and
• Interfaces between mission critical LTE and critical control room processes such as computer-aided dispatch and integration control room systems.

Those interested in contributing to the project or learning from it can contact ICCRA at standards@iccraonline.com.

ICCRA is an independent working group of the TCCA, bringing together critical control room professionals in order to help deliver excellent mission critical services. Participation is open to any person or organisation engaged in the provision or support of a critical control room service, across all sectors.

Image courtesy Zetron.

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