It is most assuredly not our parent's world. We suddenly find ourselves in a new world where the pandemic and serious spikes in crime have implications to our critical infrastructure, our schools, our businesses, and our people. Cybersecurity remains a concern, but physical security in our personal and professional lives is now front and center. Recent attacks and attempted attacks internationally present a diverse and...
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Our nation’s stadiums, arenas, and concert venues host millions of people each year for special events. The majority of these venues will not contend with an extreme emergency during any given year. However, as we have seen in Las Vegas and more recently in Houston, consequences of extreme activity at these events, whether caused by human violence, natural disaster or another factor can be devastating...
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The complex environment of warfare and mass casualty incidents produces multiple environmental hazards that can harm personnel and prevent the accomplishment of military and public safety objectives. The renewed use of chemical weapons in Syria, contaminated water in military on continental United States (CONUS) bases, and a deadly fourth generation agent (FGA) employment in United Kingdom illustrate the continuing evolution of methods and hazards. The lack...
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Every day, our physical and digital worlds become increasingly intertwined, presenting huge opportunities for investments in a future of continuous and lasting change. This is true of Smart Cities, but also intelligent retail and smarter buildings. This digitalization of the cyber-physical world is especially promising for municipalities to uncover opportunities and overcome challenges specific to the ever present goal of creating "safer cities". Critical to...
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No matter what the public safety networks look like in 20 years, they are sure to have core capabilities grounded in location-based services. A critical component of any successful rescue operation is time. Decision cycle time can be optimized by having the precise location of buildings, core services, emergency service resources, and disaster relief sites. This information is critical to disaster relief teams and public...
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Ask any soldier or first responder and they will tell you of the importance of shared tactical video for decision-making during edge operations. Drones can now be cued to launch in real-time for overwatch. Military working dogs routinely carry low light infrared imagers that enable off-leash shared awareness for what the dog sees even though he is 200 meters forward. Video is core to intelligence...
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Much like military conflict, manmade and natural disasters present similar challenges of uncertainty, complexity and variability. These time-constrained and chaotic decision environments require rapid adaptation and an ability to pivot quickly to changes in the environment. The complexity of the event, coupled with time compressed decision space and the severity of the potential consequences, creates conditions that are unforgiving of error. Given the austere and...
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Ask anyone who has responded to a natural or manmade disaster and they will tell you, these events create the mother of all non-predictive inter-agency mashups. The multitude of agencies responding from outside of the incident area creates a need for hyperlocal services that assist in navigation, but also enable the finding and discovery of resources in the affected area of operation that can be...
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Exciting times indeed. Our partnership with Wilcox Industries, Samsung, Providence UK, Tactical Equipements FR and VARSPEX (CA) plus active international engagement pushes Blueforce rapidly into global markets as we add new service providers, value added resellers, and technology partners. With these partnerships comes expansion into new geographies, here in the United States, but also globally. With these new geos comes the need to support a...
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Gaining real-time access to the wide array of video sources at an incident location has always been one of the "golden rings" of interest for on-scene Command. We largely trust our eyes and value visual confirmation as we consider the criticality and impacts of the decisions that need to be made. For incident-based video sources and the associated live streaming, low latency influences the sense...
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