Police, fire and other emergency services in Washington DC are
turning to open standards and instant messaging to overcome their
inability to communicate via proprietary voice radio systems.
This wireless instant messaging system will accomplish what the
services' radio communications cannot, and that's the means to
communicate seamlessly with police, fire, medical and other
agencies that may be responding to an emergency. It will also give
rescue workers access to multiple state and federal databases.
The project, called the Capital Wireless Integrated Network, or
CapWIN, was envisioned before 11 September and grew out of
frustration over the communication problems that Washington,
Virginia and Maryland agencies have had in co-ordinating responses
to traffic problems.
However, after the terrorist attacks last year, the US Congress
approved $20m (£13.3m) for CapWIN. IBM was selected this month to
undertake the project.
"We had to provide a very open-standards-based approach. The
customer did not want a proprietary solution; they did not want to
be vendor-dependent," said Kent Blossom, IBM's director of safety
and security services for IBM Public Sector.
The system will be based on Web standards, XML and Java and will
use IBM's MQ messaging technology. It will support up to 10,000
users from some 40 agencies.
The Center for Advanced Transportation Technology at the University
of Maryland will provide the communications bridge for the system.
Fred Davis, deputy director of the CapWIN project, said that as far
as he knows, the project is unique. "This has never been approached
before, that I'm aware of, in this large of a scale," he said.