[opendtv] Rochester Responders Tuning in Datacasts
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 10:46:07 -0500
http://www.tvtechnology.com/features/news/2006.03.08-04-n-rochester.shtm
l
Rochester Responders Tuning in Datacasts
Pubcaster WXXI, Triveni build emergency info system
by Sanjay Talwani
ROCHESTER, N.Y.: One night about two years ago, Lt. Dan Bender
of the Rochester (N.Y.) Fire Department, was watching HBO
on-demand, and got an idea.
What if the city and county's emergency and public health and
safety squads had a similar kind of on-demand menu of training
programs, weather updates, daily schedules and, when needed,
information on an emergency in progress? And what if 100
offices and agencies in Rochester and Monroe County, N.Y.,
could access all this continually updated content using that
most familiar of man's tools, the remote control?
Since his on-demand epiphany, Bender has been awarded a hefty
federal grant, acquired a Triveni Digital SkyScraper
datacasting system, and a couple of extra megabits-per-second
on the public airwaves of WXXI-DT, the local PBS DTV station.
He's also managed to sell the program, the Emergency Training
and Information Network (ETIN), to his local emergency response
crews-including about 39 fire departments in the largely rural
county. And the system is so easy to use, he said, that it's
"fireman-proof."
Bender's project at WXXI is another example of public
television stations that are using new digital broadcast
technologies for public safety and emergency response, even as
Congress considers legislation to revise the data of analog
shut-off reassign frequencies to public safety needs.
Broadcasters say the Rochester project shows the broadcast
infrastructure itself can be a backbone of widely varied,
advanced, rich-media public services of the future.
At presstime, the WXXI project was on the verge of launching,
linking police and fire departments, hospitals, and more with
a continuous daily stream of safety and training content, plus
special emergency functions, controlled by remotes and viewed
on 32-inch LCD screens.
"What it came down to is, 'how do we consolidate all this
content and deliver it over a single pipe, so to speak, to a
dedicated location like a firehouse, like a police station,
like a hospital, without creating too much overhead at the
recipient site?'" said Ralph Bachofen, director of product
management for Triveni Digital in Princeton Junction, N.J.
Initially, Bender brought his idea to the local cable operator,
Time Warner Cable, who showed little interest, he said. But
then he met with folks at WXXI, and found a more receptive
audience. He then found a Department of Homeland Security
grant-a "Special Projects Grant" in a part of DHS called the
Metropolitan Medical Response Program-whose aims closely
matched what Bender wanted to do. Of the 170 cities that were
eligible to apply for the grant, 50 applied and Rochester was
awarded the top grant, $641,480, in late 2004.
The project uses the SkyScraper DataFab component to ingest
content from various sources as program operators for ETIN's
six different channels (police, fire, hospital, etc.) drag
and drop files into appropriate folders. The SkyScraper
DataHub component allocates appropriate bandwidth for the
content and integrates it into the DTV data stream.
Around the region, a DataReceiver card in a single computer
at each location captures the data and can store it for use
in that location's local intranet and for display on one of
the LCD screens.
It may be the bleeding edge of public safety datacasting
technology, but Bender kept in mind that his firefighters
weren't all that crazy about computers and sometimes handle
their equipment a little roughly. But everyone can manage a
remote control, and the TV is on nonstop in many firehouses.
Bachofen agreed. "You don't have to do anything on the client
side, which is really important because some of the folks on
the client side might not be technical people," he said. "It
has to be simple on the client side."
THREE MODES
It doesn't get much simpler than the most basic of the three
modes in Rochester's ETIN. The "automatic" mode essentially
sends non-critical information-training videos, safety
reminders, and timely updates such as weather reports and
staffing notes to the client for display in a continuous loop.
The idea is that firefighters will see some of the short clips
-on effective CPR, or a particular rescue technique-enough
times that they will absorb the knowledge. This mode also
includes an information crawl at the bottom of the screen. As
Bender puts it, it's pretty much like watching television,
and it could include some fun features, like trivia and
quizzes, to help keep viewers interested.
The second mode is an on-demand world, where a local station
can pull down timely information-instructions on how to deal
with a particular event, for example, or a needed training
course. Since firefighters tend to be leaving the station
frequently without notice, the on-demand model works well for
them.
The third, emergency mode, would override the other modes on
all receivers so everyone is literally on the same page. And
responders heading to the scene of the emergency would have
the appropriate maps or other crucial data.
Bender beat the pavement to win local support. "One of the
big sells was to tie in all the agencies together, have this
interoperability," he said. "We had to go out and we took the
show on the road. We went to chiefs, their monthly meetings,
and we showed them what we had: 'We're going to purchase this
for you, we're going to install it for you, it's basically a
plug-and-play.'"
For WXXI's initial ETIN launch, Bender will begin with about
20 sites (mostly Rochester Fire Department locations), iron
out bugs, and expand to the other 80 or so sites across a
75-mile radius. Other agencies, including the state police
and neighboring Livingston County, have expressed interest in
joining up as well.
The cost, said Bachofen, runs roughly $2,000 to $3,000 per
receiver, depending on features, and the SkyScraper backbone
runs around $12,000 to $15,000.
Looking ahead, Bender is interested in using WiMax technology
for backchannel communication. In addition to being able to
have two-way communications, Bender wonders, wouldn't it be
great to be able to shoot a scene on video and stream it
right back to the hub for retransmission to other emergency
responders?
The project is far from the first program to use public TV's
resources for public safety needs.
WNET in New York has demonstrated, along with the Fire
Department of New York, a system of "Smart Nets," including
two-way WiMax mobile communications, over the station's
Educational Broadband Service (EBS) frequencies around 2.5
GHz, formerly known as the Instructional Television Fixed
Service Band. Unlike DTV datacasting, which generally blasts
out 8-VSB signals one-way, broadcasters are allowed to
modulate their EBS signal in different ways, such as WiMax's
mobile two-way 802.16e flavor.
The WNET focus is on front-line responders like police and
fire units. "They, for their communications needs, require,
number one, mobility and, number two, two-way communications,"
said Stephen Carroll-Cahnmann, director of Digital Convergence
for WNET.
He said the demonstration and research project, now in its
"end game" has been enormously successful in showing the
viability of WiMax technology over EBS to serve public safety
needs.
"Our argument has been, there's these frequencies in the hands
of public stations who are dying to sit down with public
safety," he said. "There's some new technology, and public
stations are at the forefront of pushing through this model."
Los Angeles public station KLCS is datacasting to 25 high
schools and eight middle schools, reaching about 40 percent of
the of the high schools in the city. These schools have access
to high-bit-rate streaming channels (1 Mbps each) over the air
with near-video-on-demand on every computer in each school,
according to Alan Popkin, director of TV engineering and
technical operations at KCLS.
And datacasts could increase rapidly in the future. Triveni
Digital says SkyScraper technology is already deployed in
public stations reaching half of all viewers in the country.
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