SAFECOM released the first-ever Statement of Requirements (SoR) for public safety communications interoperability in April 2004. This statement defines future requirements for crucial voice and data communications in day-to-day, task force, and mutual aid operations. The National Institute of Justice’s CommTech Program (formerly AGILE) partnered with SAFECOM in formulating and releasing the requirements. In April 2006, SAFECOM released an updated version of the SoR with refinements based on input from the emergency response community.
With the SoR, the Nation’s 60,000 emergency response agencies – for the first time – have a document that serves as a first step toward establishing base-level communications and interoperability standards for all emergency response agencies. The SoR helps the emergency response community convey a shared vision that ultimately will help private industry better align research and development efforts with critical interoperable communication needs.
The SoR is currently a two-volume set. Volume I explains the qualitative requirements and identifies the applications and services critical for public safety communications. Volume II describes the quantitative requirements and provides detailed quality of service methods of measurement for the applications and services identified in Volume I, along with network parameters to specify the minimum acceptable performance of public safety communications systems carrying these services.
SoR Volume I, Version 1.2 is intended to encourage and facilitate communications industry efforts to align research and development with emergency responder needs. It includes a description of the “system of systems” concept that is central to SAFECOM’s efforts to advance emergency response wireless interoperability. This approach, which is based on interface standards, gives emergency response agencies the flexibility to select equipment that best meets their unique technical requirements and budget constraints, and allows systems owned and operated by different emergency response agencies to communicate without having to purchase equipment from the same manufacturer.
SoR Volume II, Version 1.0 covers three main areas: speech, video, and network performance. The initial application of this document is for mission-critical speech and video services in addition to specifying network performance parameters to meet these applications' quality of service needs.
To help review and revise the SoR, SAFECOM established a working group comprised of members of the emergency response community from all disciplines with specialized expertise, knowledge, and understanding of communications technology. This working group will continue to provide on-going feedback and recommendations for future improvements to the document.