South West & South Wales Region – Chair’s Comments – March 2010
Visual Comms Matters
It was great to see so many of you at our most recent regional members meeting, a joint event with our colleagues from the West Midlands region, held on Tuesday 23rd March at the Council Offices in Bristol. We counted 67 attendees at the event and the feedback the committee received was nothing but supportive and complementary about another very successful event. If you haven’t been to our meetings for a while, do try to attend the next one, your committee is working hard to secure high quality speakers who deliver a broad view and plenty of information on the subject matter in hand.
At this most recent event, “Visual Communications – from Concept to Conviction” members were able to gain intelligence about a number of new ways of working. The event started with the Highways Agency providing an overview of the CCTV services they are able to deliver to a wide variety of interest groups via the Video Information Highway. This provides still image and video image services and its applicability is evidenced through the comments of one user who said “HANET has helped – in being able to pinpoint the incident if we have received a vague address, and to pass this information on to the resources mobile to the incident.” Further information about these services can be found at:
• For still images – http://www.hanet.org.uk/
• For video images – http://www.highways.gov.uk/traffic/15891.aspx
Our event was kindly sponsored by Northrop Grumman, and they provided a comprehensive overview of their work in Lewes with Sussex Police and the NPIA. Building on the success of their work in New York Northrop Grumman deployed a high bandwidth mobile solution in Lewes and concluded a range of work that included the backhaul of live video from vehicles and body worn cameras to aid in the prevention and detection of crime.
After a little light refreshment, we were fortunate in having 3 demonstrations for members to visit. These included a practical demonstration of the Highways Agency HANET, described above; a look at a SIS Live satellite truck; and, a guided tour of the Royal Berkshire Fire & Rescue Service mobile command vehicle.
Over lunch our members were able to meet with and discuss business with a number of exhibitors who took table top displays. We had a wide variety of exhibitors and members reported that this was a particularly useful aspect of the day.
Following lunch we continued the Visual Communications theme with an inspiring paper delivered by Graham Libby of Hampshire Fire & Rescue Service about its 2 year old aerial observation system – a rotary winged unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). It is clear that this modestly priced resource is able to deliver real operational and safety benefits and it was good to hear that this resource is being used in support of collaborative working too. The power of live pictures for Fire Service command and control was developed by Nick Oxborough of Royal Berkshire Fire & Rescue Service who saw the key benefits as being:
• More effective & efficient command & control
• Improved public and Firefighter safety
• Minimised disruption to society
• Reduced ambiguity
• Sharing of information
Moving to policing matters members were entertained and informed by DCI Neil McGuiness-Smith of the NPIA. He provided an overview of the NPIA’s Information Systems Improvement Strategy (ISIS) before relating the critical part that the effective collation of digital evidence plays in fighting crime and how, through his project, this will be developed and refined in the days ahead.
It was really pleasing to see how many of our members stayed with us right to the end of the day and those that did received the final presentation of the day delivered by Neil Cohen of the Home Office Scientific Development Branch (HOSDB). Neil encapsulated the general thrust of the day by relating to members the problems brought about by the proliferation of CCTV systems over the years and outlined the scope and ambitions of the Home Office CCTV Strategy, which aims to do something about this.
Our thanks are extended to our speakers and delegates and to our 15 exhibitors.
Finally, for now, please don’t forget to get the annual BAPCO show in your dairy. Once again, this will be held at the Business Design Centre, Islington, this time on 20-22 April. See www.bapco.co.uk.
