WIDENS

- user's perspective

Advocacy for Simplicity was identified regarding interactions with users. Gathering the users' visions on future public safety communications systems is a key requirement for choosing the right direction for new developments: this entails discussing with different organisations (medics, police, fire brigades, …) in different countries across Europe. WIDENS has developed a very comprehensive questionnaire to gather these requirements, but the initial feedback has been low. The methods require a reshuffling of the questionnaire to make it more straightforward and shorter for public safety forces officials to complete it easily, thus providing most effectively the required user inputs and requirements.

One of the other important objectives of this users' requirement gathering is to identify the emerging needs that are not fulfilled by present technology and that would benefit from the progress in the IT and communications fields. Maybe looking for the unique 'killer application' is not the way to go, but the aim is rather to identify a larger range of possible usages and applications. During the workshop the following trends have been identified by the different presentations and discussions :

- broadband capabilities to gather video data to monitor locally or remotely a given area (D. Berrouard)
- localisation features for the public safety users on the field (G. Guibé)
- interconnectivity on different scales for better coordination and resource sharing during emergency operations (S. Bandhyapadhyay).

- technologies

- architectures and standards