Huntsville firm designs mobile emergency response equipment
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
When terrorists slammed airplanes into buildings on Sept. 11, 2001, the public learned that policemen, firefighters and city officials often don't have a common means to communicate.
Radios for police and fire departments are not on the same frequency. City departments use radios that aren't compatible with the county's equipment.
"The public criticized New York for not having a standard way for agencies to talk to each other during the disaster, but it's not just a big-city problem," said Robert Belton, project manager for TEAM, a mobile emergency-response unit designed by Huntsville-based Quantum Research International, Inc. "Small- and medium-sized cities across the country have the same situation."
TEAM, which stands for Tactical Emergency Asset Management system, is a self-contained emergency command center that delivers a common communication path to multiple agencies that traditionally have been unable to communicate. TEAM can be transported on a full-size pickup truck or utility trailer but is independent of the truck and can be mounted as a standalone unit.
Huntsville agencies got to use TEAM recently, when suspected bomber Eric Robert Rudolph was moved from Birmingham to Huntsville for a hearing at the federal courthouse downtown. Belton and his crew set up Quantum's TEAM unit on the courthouse premises.
"We established a common network for the Huntsville Police Department, Madison Police Department, Madison County Sheriff's Department and the U. S. Marshal Service," Belton said. Quantum's equipment provided high-speed satellite Internet access, a wireless access point and video surveillance for law enforcement personnel.
At first glance, the TEAM unit resembles a standard camper shell on a pickup truck. But open its doors and it's anything but standard, with racks of cutting-edge electronic equipment.
Frank Pitts, chief executive officer at Quantum, enlisted Belton to develop TEAM. Belton was a natural to lead the project; during his 26-year career in the U.S. Army, he worked on a similar "battle lab" for the Space & Missile Defense Command.
Belton and Paul Balance, the project's system integrator, worked for about a year to deliver the TEAM product. The two relied on electronic equipment from Quantum's sister company, Quantum Technology, Inc. Belton met with Huntsville's emergency management officials.
"We asked them to tell us the exact requirements they would need to do their job," he said. The emergency workers walked the Quantum team through a recovery scenario for a natural disaster or terrorist attack.
TEAM is a cooperative research and development project between the Army and Quantum. "We kept the concept targeted for homeland security in cities with small to medium populations," Belton said.
How it works
TEAM operates with a radio "bridge" to raise conflicting frequencies to a common level. "TEAM uses commercial, 'off-the-shelf' equipment," Belton said. A typical configuration includes laptop and personal computers running on a Windows operating system, a printer, high-bandwidth satellite antenna and controller, a satellite dish and monitors, radio rack mounts, cellular telephones and power controls.
Computer monitors display a touch-panel interface to direct the unit to establish the bridging "net" or any other function. Easy-to-read graphics show the communication network being created by linking different emergency agencies. Going a step further, two users within a network, such as a response coordinator and a police chief, can connect solely to one another.
The satellite antenna and television dish are mounted on the unit's roof. For satellite communication, the unit has its own geospatial system.
TEAM can also access the Internet or a company's Intranet, Belton said.
The unit can be customized depending on agencies' needs. Specialized mission packages may include such options as video conferencing, closed-circuit monitoring and Web video streaming (to broadcast images from a disaster scene), multimedia presentations and satellite telephone connections. Depending on the options that a client adds, Belton estimates the cost at $200,000 to $225,000 per system.
Cell phone service that is knocked out by storms or other emergencies can be relaunched with TEAM's "cell phone on steroids," Belton said. The powerful cell phone has a high-gain antenna and a three-watt transmitter, thousands of times stronger than a normal cell phone.
"If a tornado takes out cell towers, this phone is strong enough to reach another tower outside the local area. It can accommodate three independent phone lines," he said. It can also allow a cell phone to talk to a remote radio.
"TEAM can patch that phone call into any radio in the bridge," he said. "We can integrate all radios and link into telephones and bridge to a radio or network of radios."
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