Communications Architecture for National Security and Public Safety: Multijurisdictional, Multitechnology Network of Interoperable Networks

Anytime, anywhere, and any media communications and information transfer across multiple jurisdictions within and between public safety, emergency response, national security and emergency preparedness (PS/ER/NS/EP) communities are becoming increasingly important in preventing and responding to crises. The diversity of networking technologies and network services used by these jurisdictions poses serious interoperability challenges and hinders information sharing in a multijurisdictional coalition. In this paper, we discuss interoperability challenges and proposed approaches to address these challenges. In particular, we discuss solutions based on common backbone technologies and several types of interoperability gateways. We illustrate the approach using several scenarios. We are testing some of these scenarios in our lab.