Catalyst Communications Technologies, Inc., a pioneer in Radio over IP, will demonstrate a unified approach to Situational Awareness for Critical Communications.  At the Seventy-Ninth annual meeting of the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) on August 19 and 20, the company will show how critical communications personnel can better understand their environment and thereby improve the safety of First Responders and the general public.  Catalyst will demonstrate an integrated approach for communicating life-threatening circumstances with a variety of legacy land mobile radio systems and will extend that approach to emerging technologies like Long Term Evolution (LTE).  Demonstrating new Graphical User Interfaces for a traditional dispatch console, a tablet, and a hardened laptop personal computer, the company will show how different public safety officials can share an intuitive understanding as events unfold across agencies and geographic areas.

Robin Grier, Catalyst’s president, explains, “Traditionally, public safety agencies, federal officials, critical infrastructure companies, and others have used a variety of LMR systems and other tools for coordinating activities.  Not only do these tools often lack consistency for basic voice communications, but they also often lack consistency for signaling critical situations.  Catalyst has solved this incongruity by applying global management of information from a variety of sources and simplifying its presentation to dispatchers and front line personnel.”  For this demonstration, Catalyst focused on the most widely deployed and often diversely implemented crisis indicator – the “Emergency” function.  This LMR-unique capability is used in a variety of ways by the industry and its implementation varies among the radio manufacturers.  Catalyst has normalized the “Emergency” function in its dispatch console system by taking a “Situational Awareness” approach and is delivering a solution that will present dispatchers and field personnel with a comprehensive status display across all “emergency-capable” radio platforms. This allows dispatch personnel to quickly recognize what is happening in the field so that informed and accurate decisions can be made and safety can be enhanced.

Grier continues, “As the Land Mobile Radio industry moves toward implementing critical communications on more IP networks, including those over LTE, “Emergency” is a vitally important feature that must cross the boundaries that arise when converging various technologies into a seamless communications network.” Many of the radio system standards are written so that only systems of the same architecture can speak to each other, i.e. P25-to-P25. However, due to economic pressures, older radio systems often cannot be replaced quickly but continue to operate in conjunction with the newer systems.  Critical functions like “Emergency” must be able to cross these LMR jurisdictional hurdles in order to provide an acceptable level of service for Public Safety and other agencies.  Catalyst has addressed this issue with its solution for primary dispatch, IP|Console, as well as with its hardened laptop and its tablet applications (collectively called IP|Soft Radio) so that “Emergency” is incorporated into the larger information flow that can be handled uniformly across legacy and emerging technologies.

Agencies using traditional LMR systems now have a solution that includes methods for managing several emergencies simultaneously, across multiple systems, keeping them easily distinguishable from each other.  This capability is not intrinsic to many of today’s radio systems and requires a console system that can overcome these shortcomings. Additionally, the “Emergency” status is latched in the Catalyst console subsystem even if latching is not supported by the associated radio system.  A field user may be incapacitated and unable to remind the dispatcher that the emergency is still in progress, so latching is critical.  As these agencies move to new technologies, like LTE, they can continue to use the same dispatch console and COTS subscriber devices.

Catalyst’s IP|Console  will be displayed in Booth 625 at the APCO Exposition in Anaheim, CA.  The new approach to Situational Awareness described above, including cross platform emergency capabilities, is part of the demonstration and is immediately available for delivery. In addition, a new Catalyst white paper titled “Management and Interoperability of Emergency Status for Today’s Mobile Radio Systems” is immediately available from the company by contacting info@catcomtec.com or (434) 582-6146.

About Catalyst Communications Technologies, Inc.
Catalyst markets Radio Control over IP technology for the Land Mobile Radio Industry and is a force for change in the effort to bring Internet-derived technologies into push-to-talk voice applications.   Catalyst focuses on products that leverage standard Windows-based computers to reduce cost and increase the efficiency of network operators and end users.  Catalyst’s extensive product line significantly enhances communications systems by seamlessly bridging wireless and wireline communications networks for dispatch and network-based interoperability.