Frequentis Addresses Efficient Use of Drones in Public Security
At PMRExpo, Vienna-headquartered Frequentis shows its integrated solutions – LifeX and ASGARD – that allow location data and video from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or drones to be fed directly into workstations in control centres. Firefighters, police, emergency medical services, lifeguards, and search-and-rescue crews, usually responding to a wide range of emergencies every day, are all too often hindered by a lack of critical information. Thus, video and sensor data provided by drones could vastly support them in their missions. In Cologne, Frequentis highlights how small unmanned aircraft can be efficiently utilised in emergency situations by directly integrating their critical surveillance information into the control centre’s communication systems. According to the company, the system design is fully scalable and will support autonomous BVLOS (beyond-visual-line-of-sight) operations, if permitted by local legal legislation. This will allow emergency services to use drones for quickly obtaining real-time aerial views of a situation as it unfolds. The applications detailed in Cologne deliver live video data to the control centre, where the data feed can be processed and displayed by Frequentis‘ LifeX multimedia collaboration platform (as used in large national public safety organisations) or its ASGARD communication system. The latter is already used in 35 security centres for industry and fire departments in Germany, confirms Frequentis, continuing that resolution and quality can be configured by a mobile app to use the maximum available bandwidth of encrypted LTE connectivity.
“With the help of this technology, the control centre can quickly and directly gain an information advantage, improving situational awareness, allowing simplification and acceleration of emergency services work processes,“ says Jan Ziegler, Head of New Business Development UAVs.
Stefan Nitschke