STORY
Franklin County NY needed to have better awareness of the situational emergency communications sites.
PROBLEM
• Long and frequent system downtime.
• Confused and wasted service calls.
• Complex, non- expandable, rigid systems on the market.
SOLUTION
Increase situational awareness in a cost- efficient, but easily customizable way by leveraging Davicom’s Davicom CORTEX360 units and accessories.
RESULT
• Reduced downtime.
• More efficient service calls.
• Improved emergency communications reliability
• Increased first- responder safety
• Comprehensive solution with no recurring system fees.
The Story
About 10 years ago, Franklin County NY upgraded from a Low Band Radio system to a High Band Radio system. Due to budgetary constraints, the upgrade process was done in small steps, slowly upgrading sites over an extended period of time as money became available through the use of grant funding. This process meant that several different types of equipment were in use at the same time and had to work together. The county never had a solution to remotely monitor this wide assortment of equipment at the sites, and these sites were plagued with failures that caused extended downtime.
The Problem
The problem was that there were frequent failures at the emergency services communication sites and support technicians had to go on service calls blind. This caused further delays since back and forth travel to the sites was required to diagnose the issues. Due to the unknown root cause of the failure, the wrong equipment vendors were frequently contacted and everybody ended up wasting valuable time before the issue was resolved. For example, an environmental issue could cause a radio to shut down due to overheating, but the required resource was the HVAC technician and not the radio technician.
Franklin decided that enough was enough and that they needed a monitoring system that would give them situational awareness of the equipment’s operational status as well as of the site’s indoor and outdoor environment. This was vital, given the mission critical usage of the communications sites and dire consequences of having a failure occur during an emergency. In addition to site failures and delayed repairs, time wasted by already overworked staff was having a demotivating effect on morale.
The Solution
Davicom’s Cortex products were suggested to Franklin County by their local Bearcom Radio Dealer because of the products’ flexibility, extensive list of sensors and ability to connect to a wide variety of site devices.
After an initial demonstration, the benefits of Davicom’s solution quickly became apparent and were seen to match perfectly with the county’s needs.
One of these needs was to have the ability to quickly and easily create a completely custom solution with a Graphical User Interface that was tailored to the immediate needs of the county, but also knowing that the system could grow over time as needs evolved. Davicom’s systems were easily expandable without requiring additional system engineering, programming or large system upgrades. Check! ✓
Another need was to have the ability to monitor environmental alarms, such as wind speed, indoor and outdoor temperature, lightning storm approach and lightning strikes sustained by the tower at each site. Davicom already had all these sensors available and time-tested with their Davicom Cortex units. Check! ✓
Site backhaul connectivity had to accommodate legacy sites which only had dial-up modem capability as well as modern sites with full IP network access. Check! ✓
All this information from the various sites had to be brought back and monitored live on a central computer at a central dispatch location via the different communications channels. Check! ✓
As a bonus, the ability to monitor the radios, control the generator, and power cycle equipment through a network PDU was a great addition to the initial needs.
The main priority was nevertheless to have a complete suite of options that was simple to use, yet customizable and readily expandable for future evolution of the system’s requirements. Check! ✓
How It Played Out
Prior to providing the actual equipment, Davicom helped the County define the monitoring setup requirement and fine-tune the planned GUI.
Once the equipment was delivered, Davicom provided support to program the site configurations and GUI/workspace displays as well as to present a complete training session on use and programming of the units.
In the end, Davicom was able to provide a complete solution that met the immediate needs of the county, but was modular in a way that made it affordable for the current requirements and still expandable for the future.
The Result
Since the units have been deployed, Franklin County has experienced reduced downtime of critical infrastructure. Now, pre-emptive alarms allow non-emergency responses to correct issues prior to outages occurring.
Situational awareness of site conditions is used to prepare for storms, special events, or planned outages.
System reliability has improved and service calls have been reduced or shortened. Downtime is less frequent and Franklin County are now able to be more proactive instead of just reactive and blind.
