Through the looking glass

Dec 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Jim Barthold

“We've had three multiple-victim shooting incidents, and it really has helped things to go more smoothly to have a better idea of how severe the injuries are before the patient arrives,” Valenzuela said.

The Wi-Fi mesh network ties everything together, but unlike other municipal networks, it is not available to the general public. The traditional municipal Wi-Fi model calls for public safety to ride along free on a network that provides low-cost Internet service to residents and businesses and is supported by user fees and/or advertising.

“Our network is not as dense as other networks that do it for the public,” Leyva said. “We have maybe two radios per square mile when you'd need 15 to 20 radios to make it available to the public. We're not there to do service to the public.”

Although the network doesn't offer Internet service to the public, the network's goals are very public-oriented.

“We want to share this in the buses to entice people to ride buses instead of driving cars and get free Internet access while doing that,” Leyva said. “The bus would have a [Tropos router], which is part of the closed network, and that would go to an access point and that's where people would attach. They wouldn't attach to the actual mesh.”

Leyva readily admits that Tucson entered the wireless space from a different direction than most of its municipal counterparts, which started networks to help consumers bridge the “digital divide” with inexpensive high-speed broadband connectivity.

“We think we got it right the first time doing it backwards from everybody else,” he said. “When we started looking to this system in '99, the money was with medical applications. … [We] created this ER-Link program to provide a service for which funding was available and, as an extra, be able to have many other communications after that.”

A successful Wi-Fi network is big news in today's environment. Municipalities have been taking it on the chin as build-out schedules have gone awry, and one of muni Wi-Fi's biggest proponents, EarthLink, has taken a side step and is currently reconsidering its approach to the sector, which in turn is making many jumpy. In addition, the muni model just hasn't seemed to jell, despite the best intentions of city officials to use citywide wireless to help residents and encourage tourism.

Now, as Tucson is demonstrating, Wi-Fi can serve the public interest without actually touching the public.

“Public safety is big,” Tropos' Barton said. “We have seen a tremendous amount of interest in Wi-Fi and have multiple cities using it for public safety.”

She believes that public-safety agencies will find the network's architecture attractive. “When you're tooling around in a car, you're actually in the coverage area because you have the router right there,” Barton said. “By having the router in the car, there [is accessibility to] high-bandwidth applications. There are no special antennas; it typically goes in the trunk in a self-contained box.”

Besides public safety, there's an element of police safety involved as well.

“Today many of the police officers are riding by themselves. … They have no backup, so a video camera can monitor them while they're doing that, and [the footage can] be transmitted back to a central location where someone can keep an eye on the officer. In addition, these days video can be used in court as evidence,” she said.

Tucson is still learning what the system can do. The transportation department is installing cameras with even more capabilities on selected traffic lights and considering using the video to catch traffic violators or other law-breakers, while other city departments are planning to give employees voice-over-IP phones that connect through the network.

Meanwhile, University Medical Center is considering using portable on-scene cameras to bring even more efficiencies to emergency room staffing.

“Inevitably, we err on the side of being conservative” and over-responding to an emergency, Valenzuela said. “That tends to wear out the trauma team. Our main objective in taking on ER-Link is to see if we can reduce the amount of over-commitment of resources.”