The growing adoption of drone systems within public safety agencies is increasing demands for more sophisticated and streamlined solutions from drone solution providers. They understand the pitfalls of the technology and are looking for better solutions that anticipate and understand their unique needs, such as maintaining connectivity and situational awareness in rural environments and urban canyons, and centralizing access to mission-critical data via command centers for easy distribution throughout their command structure.
For those who have not yet adopted, they are starting to see how legacy “pen and paper” processes are impeding the efficacy of missions when compared to those who have integrated technology like drones. Going in blind into a mission without awareness of the circumstances has led to tragic loss of life for both police and civilians alike. Drones and other technologies are showing how they can dramatically change those scenarios—over 940 people to date have been saved because of drone technology.
Drone companies like Volatus Aerospace are seeing both the growing interest of new public agencies and the pain points of current agencies using the technology. To address these needs, they are investing in more complete and sophisticated turnkey technology solutions, like Mobile Command Centers, that solve key challenges and integrate more seamlessly into standard procedures, while offering the flexibility for customization.
“Mobile Command Vehicles provide public safety with a centralized point for the collection of mission-critical data,” said Dean Attridge VP of Solutions Engineering at Volatus Aerospace. “Whether that’s street cameras that you’ve accessed remotely, the drones you have flying overhead, incident command software that you’re operating—all of it can be brought into the vehicle at the incident to brief staff and run the mission. We are moving away from teams crowded around a map on the trunk of the car with a flashlight and marker pens into the computer age for law enforcement by using these kinds of vehicles, and it is improving outcomes.”
Mobile command centers are starting to become an essential tool for public safety agencies. Once seen as a high-ticket item only obtainable by large city centers and the military, mobile command vehicles have come down in size and price to be within reach of many of today’s agencies through grants and other funding, enabling them to provide better services to their communities. They provide sophisticated hubs that enable emergency services to command operations and aggregate multiple sources of data to make mission-critical decisions as well as maintain a reliable and vital connection between personnel and resources—solving many of the primary pain points of most emergency service agencies who are leveraging the technology today.
For example, to maintain connectivity in the most challenging environments command vehicles supplied by Volatus come equipped with a multicellular bonded modem with the ability to add satellite communications—ensuring that teams stay connected no matter how remote they are.
The key, however, is how well the command center works with other critical systems already in place such as real-time crime center reporting, dispatch, agency software and hardware, and so on. Everything needs to be compatible and integrate seamlessly—law enforcement teams do not have time to deal with equipment malfunctions or compatibility issues while on site. Volatus sees delivering a total public safety solution of drones, vehicle, and software as paramount to meeting the needs of the public safety sector. They develop and vet each component in their solution package to be compatible and reliable, ensuring that everything works as expected.
As public safety agencies understand what they need from the drone industry, it is important that we understand and deliver on those needs—developing vetted, integrated, and complete solutions is the way to get there.
