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Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
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6

Public Safety Communications Research

The Communications Technology Laboratory’s (CTL’s) Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) research focus area is facing a budgetary challenge distinct from the other research focus areas—the Public Safety Trust Fund (hereafter referred to as the Trust Fund) funding that has supported much of the research is expiring.

The Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 (P.L. 112-96) initiated the deployment of a nationwide First Responder Network (FirstNet) and established CTL as the research and development arm of FirstNet. This act appropriated $300 million from spectrum auction proceeds to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to be used as specified in 47 U.S.C. § 1443 (2016), “Public Safety Wireless Communications Research and Development” (see Box 6.1). The spectrum auction funds became available to CTL in fiscal year (FY) 2016, and the Act specifies that at the end of FY 2022, all appropriated funds that are unused are to be returned to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Approximately $50 million of this fund were spent each year.

The CTL PCSR Division was tasked with the research and development to support the use of FirstNet, while the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) was given the charge of constructing and managing FirstNet. FirstNet is now serving approximately 3.5 million first responders nationwide. CTL and FirstNet work together collaboratively: CTL has expertise in requirements determination, whereas public safety organizations typically do not have the technical capabilities to determine requirements on their own. The PCSR Division’s role was to create a roadmap for reliable public safety technologies, conduct a needs assessment to determine priorities, and research new technology as needed to extend the capabilities of FirstNet. This required engaging in user-centered design with the distinctive first responder community. FirstNet can then invest in the innovations developed through PSCR programs to facilitate deployment.

Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
×

CTL’s PSCR research areas are as follows:

  • Mission Critical Voice, which focuses on communications for first responders including direct mode communications, mission-critical push to talk, Land Mobile Radio-to-cellular (i.e., Long-Term evolution [LTE]) communications, and public safety user quality of experience;
  • Location-Based Services, which focuses on indoor mapping, tracking, and navigation for the public safety community;
  • User Interface/User Experience, which facilitates the provision of tools to first responders that are designed around their specific context, tasks, and requirements, based on user-centered design and feedback; and
  • Public Safety Analytics, which includes research on algorithms, data sets, and open-source tools that can be leveraged by public safety organizations to analyze emergency events.
Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
×

There are also two crosscutting research areas that focus on use cases that were identified as being important to PSCR stakeholders:

  • Security use cases that involve developing and enhancing security solutions to current and future public safety communications, and
  • Resilient systems use cases that involve ensuring technology works in situations where first responders have limited or no network connectivity.

To fulfill the Trust Fund mandate between 2016 and 2022, CTL had to develop research teams to enable critical contributions to be made in a short timeframe. To do this, CTL conducted PSCR work using a number of methods such as

  • Research within CTL and in collaboration with other groups in NIST,
  • External research using grants and cooperative research agreements, and
  • Prize challenges that provided innovative ways to interact with non-traditional stakeholders.

The looming expiration of the Trust Fund necessitates a scaling down of PSCR activities. The Mission Critical Voice, Location-Based Services, and User Interface/User Experience research areas have been identified as the highest priorities for continued PSCR funding in FY 2023.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

CTL’s PSCR Division is a unique national resource for the public safety community. The Trust Fund funded a wide range of activities to support the research and development of advanced communication technologies that are specific to public safety. This one-time investment enabled the public safety community to make systematic progress toward using commercial wireless communication innovations and developing the technologies and features needed for public safety. The Trust Fund enabled public safety to effectively use commercial broadband technologies, but maintaining currency with the national infrastructure requires continued significant investment. Given that both technology and the nation’s infrastructure are evolving, new and different approaches to public safety are needed.

In the time since the last review in 2019,1 PSCR had adequate funding to carry out its mission. The current review is occurring in the midst of the transition from having the Trust Fund as the main source of funding to relying primarily on traditional appropriated funds as part of the NIST-wide annual budget requests. FY 2023 will be the first time since 2005 that PSCR has not received any funding from the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate.

CTL has prioritized continued support in three core areas: Mission Critical Voice, Location-Based Services, and User Interface/User Experience. Mission Critical Voice is central to public safety. The ability of first responders to obtain clear timely voice communications in an emergency situation is necessary for them to effectively perform their missions. Location-Based Services have been narrowly defined to address the needs of first responders. User Interface/User Experience research is cross-cutting, and the expertise in that domain needs to be sustained in the public safety community.

A request from NIST for sustaining funding that aligns with these priorities was announced during the review of CTL. NIST’s continued funding request for 12 core researchers and their work in the PSCR Division meets the minimal requirements for the core research team to be sustained. Although the management of the sunset of the Trust Fund has been effective in terms of continuity of strategic priorities, the mission and funding of PSCR moving forward are less clear.

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1 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2019, An Assessment of the Communications Technology Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2019, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, https://doi.org/10.17226/25602.

Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
×

Key Recommendation 8: The PSCR Division should define its mission beyond the mandates of the Public Safety Trust Fund. Changes to the nation’s infrastructure and technology need to be taken into consideration for PSCR to position itself to stay ahead of the evolving needs of the first responder community and effectively support public safety communication in a changing world. Working with stakeholders to understand the impact of changes and prepare for them requires collaboration with other divisions in CTL, such as with the teams working on smart connected systems and next-generation networking.

The PSCR Division has done an outstanding job of bringing together the public safety community. The formation of a community that includes researchers, vendors, and practitioners is a significant achievement. The PSCR Division has created a unique interdisciplinary nexus of scientific expertise, networks of collaboration, and cutting-edge laboratories around public safety communications. Annual stakeholder meetings have created and serve to maintain a network of relationships that span the public safety communications domain. These meetings also provide an opportunity for the PCSR Division to connect with stakeholders to create cross-sector teams and potentially provide diverse sources of funding to ensure that the research, and the meetings, continue. The PSCR Division has also engaged in a process to facilitate the commercialization of public safety technology to ensure that research gains are brought to the public safety marketplace. It has facilitated the creation of a first responders purchasing guide that lists communications equipment that meets established standards. Any break in this work risks a loss of momentum and jeopardizes the progress made to date.

The PSCR Division has met the stated goals of creating a set of research portfolios and capabilities specific to public safety. In doing so, the division has built a large, active stakeholder community in which both individuals and the organization have critical leadership roles. The PSCR Division’s leadership and role as a community convener are central to the stakeholder ecosystem and needs to be maintained. Investments to maintain the annual meetings, the laboratory, the purchasing guide, and other forms of stakeholder engagement are critical. Investments to maintain the community and communication that guides the development and refinement of both short- and long-term strategic research priorities are also necessary.

Key Recommendation 9: The PSCR Division should take a leadership role in developing a sustainable model for bringing together stakeholders to research, develop, and commercialize public safety innovations. CTL should ensure the continuation of the PSCR Division’s community leadership role and its functions in convening meetings of stakeholders and PSCR community groups.

ASSESSMENT OF TECHNICAL PROGRAMS

The assessment of PSCR technical programs is complicated by the expiration of the Public Safety Trust Fund in FY 2022 and the necessity of aligning any recommendations with the future funding situation. The PSCR Division’s technical programs focus on developing, expanding, or influencing research capacity, disruptive approaches and technology, standards, products, and public safety methods. These activities directly support transforming public safety operational capabilities. Due to the PSCR Division’s success influencing early-stage research and development, it has expanded its efforts to help drive projects to the commercialization stage.

The research programs presented by CTL were Mission Critical Voice, Location-Based Services, and User Interface/User Experience. These areas have been prioritized for support beyond the expiration of the Trust Fund funds. The subsections below focus on these areas.

Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
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Accomplishments

PSCR research and development activities include both projects internal to CTL and in collaboration with external partners. The internal projects have developed measurement methods and metrics, driven participation in standards resulting in 483 public safety specific contributions, and developed unique laboratory facilities. PSCR external projects include extramural grants and prize challenges.

More than $79 million in extramural grants have been awarded to 207 recipients. These grants have resulted in 1 patent, 3 pending patents, more than 20 open-source tools and data sets, and 114 publications to date.

The PSCR Division has run 18 prize challenges to date, with four of those under way at the time of the presentation to the panel. It has awarded more than $4.5 million in 524 prizes to winning submissions from 27 different states and 7 countries. The prize challenges have engaged a diverse population of participants ranging from students to experienced industry professionals.

Mission Critical Voice

The Mission Critical Voice team has the following active research areas:

  • Mission critical push-to-talk,
  • Quality of experience,
  • Test equipment, and
  • Direct mode.

The research in these areas includes four extramural grant programs. More than $26 million has been awarded to 17 recipients.

In 2020, the PSCR team held a virtual roundtable to gather stakeholder input on Mission Critical Voice strategic priorities. Prior to this, the land mobile radio-to-LTE transition—involving the transfer of traditional land mobile radio, where local push to talk radio is available to all responders, to the broadband cellular LTE environment—had been a significant priority of the Mission Critical Voice portfolio. The development of standards and a listing of devices compliant with these standards required extensive research to develop the metrics for the standards. Completing and meeting that goal is a noteworthy accomplishment that directly addresses the purpose of the Trust Fund. The success of the land mobile radio-to-LTE transition effort enabled a shift in priorities and resources that increased the focus on research and development of quality of experience measurement. A roundtable was used to collect input on the approach to collecting Mission Critical Voice measurements and to identify new methods, variables, and parameters for the PSCR Division to consider in future research.

A core contribution in Mission Critical Voice is the development of standards to support mission-critical services on current and next-generation technologies. Public safety communication requirements are different from traditional voice communication. The PSCR team coordinated with FirstNet to introduce public safety use cases and critical communication technologies to the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) international standards body. The specific measurable components for evaluation of the quality of experience for Mission Critical Voice are mouth-to-ear latency, end-to-end access time, voice quality and speech intelligibility, and probability of successful transmission. The process is modeled as a mouth-to-ear user measure with evaluations grounded in quality of experience—availability, intelligibility, and total time of transmission.

The PSCR Division has created a unique interdisciplinary nexus of user-centered computing, working with first responders as its users and providing communications expertise to evaluate and enable the systematic migration of Mission Critical Push-to-Talk communications from traditional handsets using land mobile radio to a complex broadband environment. This nexus was enabled by the leadership shown

Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
×

by the CTL PSCR researchers in the creation of the Public Safety Communication Innovation Laboratory. Testing in this laboratory is important for doing research and developing the standards for mission critical services.

To deploy the standardized services in FirstNet and to facilitate new features that can be built on the standardized services, testing needs be done to certify compliance of the commercial devices, applications, and radio access networks (RANs) with the standards. This requires the availability of test equipment. Test equipment is used throughout the telecommunications development life cycle for each of the components (network, device, application). To address the need for test equipment, PSCR has funded three external research grants for developing test equipment. This equipment will be made available to the Global Certification Forum and PCS Type Certification Review Board certification laboratories. One grantee has created a test platform that is facilitating certification and as of November 2021, the Global Certification Forum is allowing certification laboratories to perform Mission Critical Push-to-Talk certification testing.

Direct-mode communication is considered a required feature by first responders to fully transition from land mobile radio to LTE. The PSCR Division contributed to the 3GPP standards support for LTE direct mode through device-to-device communication and off-network Mission Critical Push-to-Talk, but LTE direct mode has performance limitations and is not widely available. To overcome these issues, the PSCR team is working with the Wireless Networks Division on 5G direct mode communication (i.e., New Radio Side Link communication). It did a capacity study that showed that New Radio Side Link improves capacity over LTE while allowing flexible configurations to adapt to different public safety deployment scenarios and service requirements.2 The major features that improve New Radio Side Link capacity include configurable hybrid automatic repeat request, support of higher modulation and coding, and spatial multiplexing. Ongoing research topics include LTE and New Radio coexistence, quality of service, resource management, and relay capabilities.

Location-Based Services

The ability to locate, track, and provide information to first responders while indoors under difficult conditions remains a critical capability sought by the public safety community. The Location-Based Services team has the following active research areas:

  • Mapping,
  • Tracking,
  • Navigation, and
  • Ground truth.

The research in these areas includes five extramural grant programs with more than $18 million awarded to 15 recipients.

Accurate mapping of indoor environments provides the basis for first responder navigation and tracking. The PSCR Division’s Point Cloud City program funded three external grants that have produced publicly available, annotated, three-dimensional, indoor point clouds for 29 public and private buildings in three cities covering more than 4.5 million square feet.3 These data can be used to advance research and development in mapping, localization, and navigation for public safety. Light Detection and Ranging (i.e., LIDAR) technology, cameras, and custom sensors were used to create the point clouds of indoor environments. The annotation includes the identification of approximately 30 items of interest to first

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2 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), 2021, Study of 5G New Radio (NR) Support for Direct Mode Communications, NISTIR 8372, May, https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2021/NIST.IR.8372.pdf.

3 For more information see https://www.nist.gov/ctl/pscr/funding-opportunities/past-funding-opportunities/psiap-point-cloud-city.

Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
×

responders in the point cloud data (e.g., walls, doors, windows, and gas shutoffs). The point cloud data are also georeferenced to provide the real-world coordinates of the building features.

The PSCR Division designed this program to pair researchers with public safety organizations. This enabled the researchers to more fully understand the challenges that first responders face and focus the division’s efforts accordingly. The partnership also enabled the public safety organizations to participate in the design and implementation of the project, thereby providing input on and envisioning how the technology could be used in real-world situations. The PSCR Division is to be commended for facilitating this type of partnership that is critical to developing technology that is relevant and useful to first responders.

Through workshops with government, public safety, and industry stakeholders, the PSCR Division identified an inability to track first responders indoors when there is no pre-existing communications infrastructure as a key technology gap. To address this gap, the PSCR Division has awarded $8 million to the Crisis Technologies Innovation Lab at Indiana University to implement the First Responder Smart Tracking prize competition. This is a five-phase competition with a goal of developing and demonstrating the indoor localization and tracking of first responders within one-meter accuracy in a variety of buildings without pre-deployed infrastructure such as Wi-Fi access points or Bluetooth beacons. The phases go from concept and initial design all the way through live field-testing at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center. Phase 1 concept and initial design submissions were due on March 21, 2022, and the competition will wrap up with advanced live field testing at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center from October 23-27, 2023. A total of $5.6 million in prizes will be awarded. Twenty-five prizes were awarded for Phase 1.

One of the PSCR Division’s funded external projects is the Ultimate Navigation Chip, a chip-scale personal navigation system. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, were awarded $1.96 million to design, build, and develop the Ultimate Navigation Chip. Their design uses a variety of sensors and fuses deterministic, probabilistic, and cooperative approaches. It uses foot-based sensors, signals from cellular networks, digital TV and Wi-Fi, and cooperation from mobile agents equipped with computation and communication capabilities. In addition to the research grant, University of California, Irvine, was awarded a separate grant for a demonstration project with Orange County Fire Authority at the Authority’s Regional Fire Operations Training Center and fire stations. This project focused on their system’s tracking, localization, visualization, and data collection capabilities.

The Location-Based Services team has been working to establish an indoor localization system evaluation facility at the Public Safety Immersive Test Center (PSITC). PSITC is located in Boulder, Colorado, and is a collaborative effort between the PSCR Division and FirstNet. It provides the opportunity to perform immersive public safety standards and measurement testing in a wide variety of settings. PSITC is equipped to enable the generation of ground truth data. This allows for localization system evaluation in accordance with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standard 18305.

User Interface/User Experience

The User Interface/User Experience portfolio is a critical element for facilitating the deployment of new public safety technologies. There are active research projects in the following areas:

  • User experience research and testing methodologies,
  • Usability requirements,
  • Virtual reality, and
  • Augmented reality.

Virtual reality and augmented reality have been identified as priorities by stakeholders. The PSCR Division leverages staff from the NTIA Institute for Telecommunication Services for expertise in video

Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
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and image quality and the NIST Information Technology Laboratory for expertise in usability research. The User Interface/User Experience portfolio includes partnerships outside of NIST with four extramural grant programs resulting in 20 award recipients as well as four prize challenges, with $1.1 million awarded to 24 contestants.

The focus on public safety technology User Interface/User Experience has been productive in the past and is worthy of continued support in the future. User Interface/User Experience has been successfully integrated into the research and development of new public safety technologies. Research for next-generation communication includes research on advanced modes of interaction with communications systems based on biometrics, tactile communication, eye tracking, and even brain activity. The User Interface/User Experience team has developed and published the report Augmented Reality (AR) Usability Evaluation Framework: The Case of Public Safety Communications Research,4 which provides guidance on planning user-based usability evaluations throughout the augmented reality development cycle.

The User Interface/User Experience team has leveraged the building of the public safety community and stakeholder engagement to improve the interaction of public safety personnel with technology. The PSCR Usability team conducted an exploratory, sequential, mixed-methods study to gather insights into the experiences and needs of first responders. The initial phase of the study included in-depth interviews with around 200 first responders. This was followed by a nationwide survey of more than 7,000 first responders. The survey results have been analyzed and published in a series of “Voices of First Responders” reports that are intended for designers, developers, vendors, researchers, and public safety administrators of public safety communication technology. To date, there are nine reports in this series, each covering a unique aspect or portion of the survey data. These reports are an important contribution.

It is critical for first responders to be able to interact in a more natural manner in emergency situations. Emergencies and disasters—both human-made and natural—create unique requirements for responders when using communications technology. The context, including both the cognitive load and physical environment, alters how humans will interact with technology. The PSCR Division is responding to this by exploring the use of augmented reality and virtual reality to start prototyping and testing possible technology interfaces. A variety of virtual reality environments across public safety disciplines are available as open source on GitHub. The User Interface/User Experience team has also administered extramural grant programs focused on both virtual reality and augmented reality. The virtual reality program focused on leveraging virtual reality for training, testing, and the prototyping of new systems for first responders. The augmented reality program focuses on transitioning augmented reality prototypes and research concepts from a laboratory setting, commercializing them, and making augmented reality technologies operational in the field.

PSITC was designed to help answer key research questions around the future of user interfaces for public safety training and operations. PSITC is a unique resource that allows the emulation of a wide variety of virtual environments. It comprises a modular layout, a motion capture system capable of centimeter accuracy, a variety of augmented reality and virtual reality headsets, a mobile staircase and other equipment for z-axis motion, and physical furniture and gear to add a tactile component to simulations.

Commercialization

The PSCR Division’s commercialization efforts target the technology development and life-cycle gaps that can occur when transitioning from successful results in research laboratories and prototypes to publicly available technologies. The PSCR Division has three programs to address these gaps. The first program is Follow-on Funding for Technical and Business Assistance and Demonstration Projects with Public Safety Agencies. This program provides funding opportunities to entities that have won previous

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4 See https://www.nist.gov/publications/augmented-reality-ar-usability-evaluation-framework-case-public-safety-communications.

Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
×

PSCR Division awards in order to provide needed technical and business assistance to either advance prototypes into commercialization or create a demonstration project with a partnering public safety agency. The goal is to speed the projects toward deployment, providing first responders with needed improvements. There have been seven awards made through this program. The University of California, Irvine, demonstration project with the Orange County Fire Authority described in the Location-Based Services section above is an example of one of these projects.

The second program is the PULSE Accelerator, which seeks to accelerate communications innovations in support of public safety communities. The PULSE Accelerator provides companies that are working in a PSCR focus area a free 12-week virtual program along with over 50 hours of strategic consulting and market research to help companies develop a better understanding of the public safety market. This opportunity has been offered in three rounds between March 2021 and May 2022, with 8 to 10 companies participating each time.

The third program is the R2 Network, a nationwide public safety network that connects first responders and technology innovators. The R2 Network is a public–private partnership formed with a goal of developing a free, sustainable platform to enable the connections that will facilitate innovative solutions to disaster response and resiliency (i.e., R2) challenges. The R2 Network was created with support from the PSCR Division, the FirstNet Authority, and the Economic Development Administration (all three are part of the Department of Commerce), along with industry, nonprofits, and other public safety stakeholders.

Challenges and Opportunities

The primary challenge faced by the PSCR Division is obtaining the funding necessary to maintain leadership and continuity in key research and development areas with the expiration of the Public Safety Trust Fund. Funding from the Trust Fund has enabled the PSCR Division to broaden and invigorate the public safety research and development community through internal research and grants, engage with a broad technical community through prize challenges, and help innovators learn how to bring public safety innovations from the laboratory to the market through commercialization efforts. Perhaps most importantly, all of these efforts have brought together teams of innovators and first responders to work together on building technology to support first responders. The PSCR Division has developed significant expertise in the entire technology life cycle along with the organizational aspects of bringing diverse stakeholders together to solve complex real-world problems. It is important to share this expertise so it can be used to help determine where and how investments are needed to meet the special research and development needs of the public safety community. This may also be valuable to other communities that are interested in applying research to solve real-world problems.

Recommendation 6-1: The PSCR Division should write a report on the lessons learned from the large-scale investment in public safety research, development, and commercialization that the Public Safety Trust Fund enabled. The report should make use of feedback from outside participants in PSCR projects and outside stakeholders and include technological, organizational, and human aspects, including successful commercialization efforts.

FY 2023 will be a significant transition for the PSCR Division. As the remaining research and development efforts scale down or stop completely due to the expiration of the Public Safety Trust Fund, the PSCR Division will have to reimagine its role in the public safety community. Moving forward, it will be critical for the PSCR Division to develop and leverage collaboration opportunities within CTL, NIST more broadly, other government agencies (some of which already contract with NIST to do research), and industry. For example, there are no current research issues that integrate the Smart Grid with PSCR. The safety of first responders when interacting with possibly live systems (e.g., microgrids) needs to be evaluated. For instance, safety reviews of interactions with the grid control could be integrated with

Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
×

existing utility safety reviews to bring PSCR expertise to the challenges and opportunities created by independent interoperable microgrids.

Mission Critical Voice

Although significant progress has been made in the transition from land mobile radio to LTE/broadband devices, ongoing attention is required. The continuing development of protocols, hardware, and above all the changes in the threat environment require sustained investment. The PSCR Division will continue to play a role in research and development of new Mission Critical Voice technologies along with developing the measurement capabilities necessary to deploy new features and applications in FirstNet.

As FirstNet continues to grow in adoption and deployment, it may be appropriate to shift the focus from building basic capabilities to gaining insight into deployments and traffic patterns. Data from FirstNet would be valuable for Mission Critical Voice research, and it would also be of interest to many in the broader public safety community. There currently is no agreement for FirstNet to make data available to the PSCR Division and the public safety community.

Recommendation 6-2: The PSCR Division should facilitate the establishment of a data pipeline from FirstNet to the broader public safety community. These data can be used to identify and study issues that are specific to public safety communications and may not be prioritized by the FirstNet operators given that public safety is a relatively small part of their business.

Location-Based Services

The Location-Based Services portfolio has had admirable successes but lacks a clear argument for prioritization in the long-term. Of the three priority research areas, the distinct need for a PSCR research team within CTL is more clearly illustrated by the strengths and accomplishments in Mission Critical Voice and User Interface/User Experience research. Although public safety does have unique requirements for location-based services, as infrastructure becomes more connected (e.g., the Internet of Things) and indoor localization and tracking become more mainstream, there may be opportunities to leverage the mainstream location-based service research, development, and commercial efforts of industry and academia.

Location-based services, mapping of buildings, and other data compilations create individual and systematic privacy risks. Citizen privacy is a necessary component of interacting with first responders. Risk analysis of data collection, storing, and sharing is necessary. For example, there is a need to engage in substantive risk analysis about information sharing before publishing the layout of elementary schools. NIST has a tradition of excellence in risk analysis in other domains, including the management of risks from ransomware and risks in supply chains. This expertise can be used in the context of data privacy; for example, integrating the NIST Privacy Framework into evaluations of PSCR.5 Effective privacy rubrics include data minimization, but risk minimization also requires privacy by design and actionable risk-based standards and practices.

Recommendation 6-3: The PSCR Division should create a roadmap for incorporating individual and systemic privacy risk analysis in Location-Based Services and other portfolios as appropriate.

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5 For information about the NIST privacy framework see https://www.nist.gov/privacy-framework/privacy-framework.

Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
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User Interface/User Experience

The PSCR Division has done an excellent job integrating User Interface/User Experience into research projects and prize challenges. The integration of User Interface/User Experience and involvement of the public safety community in these activities enables the technologists to understand and design for the unique challenges and requirements of first responders. This is especially important in light of the challenges in the adoption of new technologies by the public safety community. Maintaining this integrative approach throughout the research and development life cycle may be a challenge, particularly as limited funding becomes a factor.

Recommendation 6-4: The PSCR Division should continue this integrative approach to User Interface/User Experience, involving participants from the broad range of the public safety community, in ongoing and future projects.

Commercialization

Due to the expiration of the Public Safety Trust fund, the future of the PSCR commercialization programs is not clear. These programs were initiated to address the challenges of moving innovation from the laboratory and demonstration stage into a viable product. They also help those interested in commercializing innovations to better understand the public safety market and provide ongoing support. The commercialization programs are a natural follow-on to the prize challenges where early-stage technology is developed in response to various public safety critical needs. The prize challenges cultivate interest and expertise in public safety technology and the commercialization programs build on this to help facilitate entrepreneurship and create a public safety marketplace. Since the mission of the PSCR Division includes getting advanced public safety technologies deployed, the commercialization programs are important.

Recommendation 6-5: CTL should investigate partnerships to continue its commercialization programs. The collaboration between the PSCR Division, FirstNet Authority, and the Economic Development Administration to create the R2 Network is a good example of a partnership for commercialization and expansion of this can be explored.

In addition to commercialization programs, funding for public safety entrepreneurs is necessary. The Small Business Innovation Research program has proven effective for encouraging high-tech innovation.

Recommendation 6-6: The PSCR Division should investigate using the Small Business Innovation Research program to fund innovation and entrepreneurship in public safety. This may require partnering with other government agencies.

PORTFOLIO OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERTISE

To fulfill the Public Safety Trust Fund mission between 2016 and 2022, the PSCR Division had to build a team with expertise that aligned with the Trust Fund mission and public safety needs to enable critical contributions to be made in a short timeframe. The PSCR team included staff from the CTL PSCR, Radio Frequency Technologies, and Wireless Networks divisions; the NIST Information Technology Laboratory; NTIA; and the Department of Homeland Security, along with external experts from academia, industry, and the public safety community. External experts from around the world participated through research grants, cooperative agreements, and prize challenges. Recruitment of

Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
×

personnel on temporary assignment from multiple agencies enabled the PSCR Division to expand effectively during the expenditure of funds from the Trust Fund, and that organizational foresight is enabling the current scaling down and focus on the three specific areas noted in the introduction. This approach resulted in fulfilling the mission of the Trust Fund and significant accomplishments in each of research portfolios. The PSCR Division currently has 15 full-time staff who are aligned with the three research portfolios that have been identified by CTL as having the highest priority: Mission Critical Voice, Location-Based Services, and User Interface/User Experience. The PSCR Division has been able to successfully accomplish its mission with the current 23 full time federal staff, together with the temporary personnel and leveraging of outside collaborators. The expiration of the Public Safety Trust Fund could present challenges to staffing.

EFFECTIVE DISSEMINATION OF OUTPUTS

The PSCR Division has a particularly strong requirement for disseminating the results of its work, as its audience is quite broad and includes the security community, the networking community, the usability community, and the extremely diverse and distributed population of first responders. The PSCR communities of interest include both research and commercial partners. The scope of dissemination can be seen in the FirstNet Push-to-Talk Land Mobile Radio Interoperability capability project. The results of this project were disseminated through research publications, usability evaluations, creation of testing standards for operators and vendors, and the integration of these results to first responders in an acceptable, accessible format. Where feasible, the PSCR Division has required deliverables from those conducting external research or participating in prize challenges such as data sets, application programming interfaces, and open-source tools that can be used by the community and facilitate further engagement.

The PSCR stakeholder meetings have been extremely valuable, bringing together a wide range of stakeholders, showcasing their results, and obtaining feedback about future directions. The annual meetings have created and serve to maintain a network of relationships that span the public safety communications domain. The meetings give the PSCR Division an opportunity to report out on research projects and get community input. Stakeholders from the public safety community, industry, academia, and federal, state, and local government attend the meetings. In 2020 and 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the stakeholder meeting was online and free to attend. This enabled a wider audience but also limited interactions as all-remote meetings preclude the informal interactions that occur when people gather in person. In 2022, the stakeholder meeting returned to an in-person format but included virtual content as well. The content from the stakeholder meetings is on the PSCR website.6

___________________

6 See https://www.nist.gov/ctl/pscr/annual-stakeholder-meeting.

Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
×
Page 40
Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
×
Page 41
Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
×
Page 42
Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
×
Page 43
Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
×
Page 44
Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
×
Page 45
Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
×
Page 46
Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
×
Page 47
Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
×
Page 48
Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
×
Page 49
Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
×
Page 50
Suggested Citation:"6 Public Safety Communications Research." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. 2022 Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Communications Technology Laboratory. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26778.
×
Page 51
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At the request of the director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, this report assesses the management of Standards and Technology Communications Technology Laboratory (CTL), focusing on the work, facilities, equipment, personnel, portfolios of scientific expertise, and effective dissemination of the results.

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