D.C. deploys wireless net for first responders

Public-safety officials are focused on getting broadband wireless communications into the hands of first responders. But once police, fire and emergency response officers have this capability, what can they do with it?

That’s where an innovative, Web-based application developed for Washington, D.C., is filling the gap.

The Capital Wireless Integrated Network (CapWIN) is a partnership involving Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. Its goal is to create an interoperable data- and information- sharing network for all the first responders in the region.

CapWIN has 1,700 users from 43 government agencies, including the Maryland State Police, the Virginia State Police, the District of Columbia Police Department and the U.S. Park Service.

“We’re the first of its kind in the country where multiple agencies across multiple jurisdictions can communicate in a single application to provide data, images and conferencing capability,” says Bill Henry, director of field operations for CapWIN.

The University of Maryland began developing CapWIN before Sept. 11, but Congress didn’t allocate funds until after the Pentagon was attacked.

CapWIN was started in 1998 after an incident involving a suicide jumper on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge over the Potomac River. Parts of the bridge are in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. Police from all of the neighboring jurisdictions were at the scene, but they couldn’t talk to each other, because they used different types of radios.

“The communications infrastructure was such that they had to send runners back and forth to carry messages to the different participants,” says Bill Henry, director of field operations for CapWIN. “The complaints they had that day about interoperability led to CapWIN.”

The Department of Transportation funded a pilot project for CapWIN, which was developed from 1999 to 2001. In late 2001, Congress allocated $20 million to roll out a full-fledged system across the region.

Now in its second version, CapWIN offers secure instant messaging and group chat. Users create a chat room for each incident, and the software provides a record of what is happening for managing the response. The software also supports the sharing of images, including maps and photos for users that have enough bandwidth.

CapWIN runs on laptops, but an abridged version is available for handheld devices. The application is carrier agnostic, so that individual users can access it regardless of their wireless service provider. CapWIN is free to government agencies.

“The CapWIN strength is that it provides connectivity to first responders in the field, and it provides information from the field to the command center,” Henry says. “In a major catastrophic event, CapWIN would be used as one of the main field communications links and a secondary channel if the commercial wireless or radio systems were down.”

The Maryland State Police began using CapWIN in 2004 as part of a three-year, $7.5 million initiative to automate its squad cars. The agency has purchased 1,000 laptops, which are being installing in patrol vehicles along with CapWIN, upgraded radios, cameras and radar systems.