8-9 November, St. James's Park, Newcastle, UK

British APCO continues to be the forum for public safety and civil contingencies communications engagement. This year we are taking a very active part in all the BAPCO events.

We recognise that the UK public safety community faces new challenges -  doing more with less, managing technology transition and being able to turn abundant data into increased operational efficiency and better outcomes.

At B-APCO Autumn, drop by and see us at the exhibition on level 4 of the Newcastle United Conference and Banqueting area to see how we are addressing these challenges:

Managing Technology Transition - Faced with a fast evolving technology landscape, many public sector organisations are moving away from traditional capital expense based IT procurement, opting instead for more flexible, subscription-based models. An OPEX-based service approach allows you to shift the focus from buying technology to buying outcomes. See how, with our cloud-based WAVE™ Control Room Solution (WAVE CRS), you can simplify your control room’s ESN upgrade, stay-up-to-date and save money.

Doing More With Less - Budgetary pressures combined with increased public expectations are driving the emergency services to do more with less. With the right technology your organisation can meet these challenges. Using the Pronto digital policing solution, you can increase your visibility and presence in the community through improved efficiency and productivity. With the Si500 video speaker microphone, your fire and rescue service can use captured video to enhance learning, improve incident analysis and simplify evidential capture for fire investigations. See these solutions and more devices in action.

Harnessing Abundant Data - Today, we have access to more data than ever before. The challenge is to turn the abundant data into actionable insights that lead to better outcomes for the community. See how, with the CommandCentral platform, you can take advantage of a broad set of capabilities, from intelligence that uncovers deeper insights, to records and content management that streamlines data collection and digital evidence management.

Don’t miss us in the conference either - Yann Marston is speaking on 'Transform Data into Safety, Creating an intelligence layer on legacy systems’ at 13:55 on Wednesday 8 November.

We look forward to seeing you there.

You can find out more and keep up-to-date about our participation through our dedicated B-APCO event microsite www.motorolasolutions.com/bapco and more about the Emergency Services Network (ESN) here

Fergus Mayne is Head of UK & Ireland Sales at Motorola Solutions

Fergus is on LinkedIn

Follow #ThinkPublicSafety, #BAPCO2017, @MotSolsEMEA, @BAPCOEvent on Twitter.

Julian Foster reports on 50 years of Motorola Solutions in the UK – sharing perspectives from senior executives on future innovation in Public Safety.

At the recent launch of our UK Innovation Centre, Phil Jefferson, Vice President for Western Europe and North Africa set the scene with insight on how Motorola Solutions has been helping governments, agencies and individuals to stay safe, be productive, and work smartly – for the past 90 years. Whether it’s infrastructure, devices, software, or services, the close relationship with our customers plays an integral role in the constant innovation that transforms the way individuals do their jobs on a daily basis.

Our Commitment to Innovation Continues
In 2016 alone, we invested $553M into R&D to develop the next generation of innovative technology and services. In addition, through acquisition and key investments, we spent over $1.5B on acquisitive targets focused on new technology. This investment drives innovation across our technology and service stack to address our customers’ greatest challenges.

These challenges as we know, are greater than ever with an increased security threat – both physical and digital. When this is combined with an emphasis on being more effective with less budget, it means our users are under even greater pressure.

Through organic and inorganic growth, we believe that Motorola Solutions has built the most comprehensive suite of solutions to address the mission-critical needs of both government and commercial enterprises everywhere.

A Smart City is a Safe City
Motorola Solutions has been supporting Public Safety in every moment that matters for over 90 years globally, and specifically in the UK, for the past 50 years. During that time, it’s with great pride that we provided solutions to help support Smarter and Safer Cities:

• Airwave nationwide digital TETRA network – providing mission-critical communications for every single public safety agency (and other agencies) in the UK.

• Business and mission-critical communications for the London Underground – both for public safety and the train operator. This is clearly a vital cog in how London operates.

• Supply well over 100,000 radios and mission-critical devices to UK Public Safety – including all of The Met Police Officers you’ll see on and round the streets of London.

• Pronto Mobile Policing Application Suite is now being used by over a third of UK Police Forces – and that’s growing rapidly.

Helping Society During the Moments that Mattered Most
Our ethos of helping those during the moments that matter most isn’t anything new for Motorola Solutions. It’s engrained in our DNA, and the reason why Motorolans are so proud to be part of this company:

1969 The first words from the moon spoken by Neil Armstrong were relayed using Motorola equipment.

1983 We changed the way the world communicates with the first commercial cellular call on a mobile device.

1998 Chosen to provide secure mobile communications for London Underground.

2000 Awarded the largest nationwide TETRA contract in the World with over 300,000 users.

2012 Deployed the first Public Safety 4G LTE system in Harris County, Texas – and it’s still going strong today.

2015 Awarded Lot 2 ESN Contract to provide user services, system integration, and critical functionality for the UK.

2017 Part of the winning AT&T team to deliver the US future public safety communications contract FirstNet.

Why are all these firsts important?
The result is a company with global reach and depth serving 100,000 customers in 100 different countries. This gives us a broad spectrum of use-cases and customers in which we can continue to innovate and invest.

Keeping cities safe and our communities thriving
Now we’re in London, with a bright future ahead of us. We’re incredibly proud to play a key role in helping ensure the continued safety and security of our citizens and to support the men and women who selflessly serve our great nation – every minute of every day.

Julian Foster is Global Co-Lead for the Social Media Center of Excellence at Motorola Solutions.

Connect with Julian on LinkedIn

Follow #ThinkPublicSafety, @MotSolsEMEA, on Twitter.

In this blog series, Julian Foster reports on the launch of our UK Innovation Centre – sharing perspectives from senior executives on the future of Public Safety.

Eduardo Conrado, Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at Motorola Solutions, set the scene by defining the wider technology trends that are influencing our future vision for public safety and how these will impact officers around the World.

Top 6 technology trends that will influence public safety

1. Smarter IoT Technologies. Not just within our homes, vehicles, connected cities, and infrastructure, but also from wearables on our Police Officers and Firefighters. More and more, you’ll see body-worn sensors providing valuable intelligence back to the Command Centre.
2. Information Overload. Police officers and firefighters require “eyes up, hands free”. There’s no excuse for distraction. With more data available, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will play an important role. Machine Learning will ensure only relevant situational insight is delivered to officers – at precisely the right time.
3. Modality Interacting with Information. Right-now we’re used to interacting with data through touch – but as we enter the next generation of interface, it’s voice that will become a key modality. This is already happening in our homes, if you think of voice-activated assistants such as Amazon Echo or Google Home.
4. Contextual Awareness. The importance of “who, what, where” and using that data to change the modality of how information is transmitted. How we interact with technology is going to become very important.
5. Consistency Across Platforms. Wherever in the car, on the beat, at the station, or in an emergency situation – officers will need consistent delivery and flow of information regardless of what platform or interface they are using.
6. Evolving Deployment Architecture. Whether data is stored on-premise, in the cloud, or delivered to The Edge, the exact architecture required varies per country. It’s only with this level of granularity that you can develop truly effective solutions to match the needs of Public Safety professionals around the World..

When we think about these wider trends, and combine them with observations from our customers – there’s a real opportunity for unparalleled levels of collaboration, situational awareness and productivity for public safety professionals of the future.

Sometimes a Customer Can’t Tell You What They Need, But They’ll Show You
Great products are not born from sitting in a lab. We have researchers whose job it is to “live” with our customers. Ride along with them, just observing, for 1000s of hours. Getting to fully appreciate what problems they have on a daily basis. We then look at what technology could do to help that. It’s only with this deep understanding that we can create technology solutions that truly address the needs of officers on the front line.

Designing for Moments of Terror
When we think about our design philosophy at Motorola Solutions, we talk about High Velocity Human Factors (HVHF) – designing for moments of terror. In that moment, a human brain has very little ability to process information – you only process basic properties such as colour, and your field of vision narrows. When a Police Officer is in this type of situation, context becomes very important. Is an officer doing a regular traffic stop? Sitting in his vehicle looking at information? Or on an active foot chase? Context is key when driving information out to the field.

As you look at the situation that each customer is in, you need to ask how can technology help to give an ideal user experience? And then design to that end point.

A Day in the Life of a Police Officer
There’s no “typical” when it comes to a day in the life of a Police Officer. But on the whole, we see that around 60% of time is spent on proactive policing, 15% on incident response, and 25% post incident (paperwork). If we can digitise as much admin as possible then that 25% will shrink to give officers more time to spend proactively fighting crime. We can then support officers with solutions that improve collaboration, and use AI to help predict crime. Then for during the incident, we can develop technologies that provide better insights directly to officers.

Future Edge Experience
When we think of our customers, we no longer think of one or two devices in the belt and on the chest. But actually, an eco-system of devices. At the heart of it you have a hub which is either a radio or an LTE unit – connected with a set of sensors around the officer’s body. These sensors may have different interfaces such as voice, augmented reality, or heads up displays. Video, not only for image capture, but more importantly to analyse and then trigger an action based on what’s happened. When we talk about audio, it’s not going to be just a modal of communication or a computational interface – but also using Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to analyse and either inject a bot or capture anomalies.

Today’s Connected Police Officer
Five years ago, the Motorola Solutions development team considered what the connected Police officer of the future might look like – with the combination of TETRA and broadband networks, personal area network and key wearable technologies. We added biometrics and the ability to capture heart rate. We connected sensors and accelerometers to guns and other devices worn on the belt. So as the gun gets drawn, it triggers a video camera to capture and send an image back to the Command Centre. We put smart glasses on the officer, so based on the context – if they’re in an emergency situation with gun drawn – the glasses automatically start capturing images. While smart glasses enable the Command Centre to push intelligence out to the officers and display details such as information based on licence plate number etc. About 90% of what we futurecast back then, is already going into our product roadmap.

Imagine a World 5 Years From Now
Last year we took another look into the future. The person, the vehicle and the drone will become a single unit. Working in unison, they’ll all be connected in the field and to the Command Centre. The vehicle will not only be a mode of transportation but also a partner – becoming a computational platform that analyses information in real-time.

When it comes to the officer we see biometric sensors and communication capabilities being distributed around the officer’s body in a single wearable. Charging, communication, and data components will all be combined. Augmented reality and multiple cameras – not just to capture video, but to automatically analyse the surrounding area as officers walk around and trigger an action based on what’s happening. Eduardo and his team are testing all of these technologies right now, so watch this space.

In my next blog, we’ll take a closer look at these innovative solutions, and consider how they’ll impact the working lives of Public Safety professionals in the future.

Julian Foster is Global Co-Lead for the Social Media Center of Excellence at Motorola Solutions.

Connect with Julian on LinkedIn

Follow #ThinkPublicSafety, @MotSolsEMEA, on Twitter.