Alcatel-Lucent has introduced a new ‘First Responder Video’ solution to provide mission-critical information on handheld devices to fire, police and ambulance services to strengthen responsiveness, safety, teamwork and cost efficiency. This solution gives first–response emergency teams the ability to view and rapidly share multiple video and data feeds simultaneously on mobile devices.

Building on Bell Labs research in multimedia and cloud, the First Responder Video utilises 4G LTE mobile broadband networks to convey real-time video and information rapidly and cost-efficiently.

Alcatel-Lucent’s First Responder Video solves the issue of stretched capacity of a mobile broadband network by optimizing bandwidth use and integrating multiple video feeds and other operational data into one single stream to transmit to situation commanders. This enables the fast delivery of bandwidth-hungry video and data among teams, allowing them to intelligently assess and respond to a situation more effectively, without compromising the overall delivery speed or quality of the LTE network.

First Responder Video employs a ‘thin client’ strategy, which ensures that data processing takes place at the powerful control centers to free up the device itself to focus on receiving and sending images and data. It works seamlessly with existing control center dispatch applications and allows teams to send video and data to many different types of ‘smart’ mobile devices at the same time. This gives agencies the freedom to adopt a mobile device suitable to them or use existing compatible devices to maximise investments.

Teams can adjust the number of video and data views as well as the screen layout, so information is delivered in a way that is appropriate to the situation as well as meaningful in relation to the size of the device. Agencies can also allow first responder staff to share their own videos of a situation and team members can further customize their views by panning or zooming the video views to find out more about a situation. 

According to company, the solution has seen great results in a live end-to-end trial with the Polícia Militar do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil, allowing teams to be sent views from in-car cameras. Easy-to-use screens enhance operations in the toughest environments and the ability to maximize available bandwidth to share multiple high-quality video images on a variety of mobile devices maximizes cost of ownership at a time when budgets are being stretched.