Tough jobs in the public sector need tough devices

Tough jobs in the public sector need tough devices

4 minutes Alex Nollman, Panasonic, National Sales Manager - Public Sector Mobility Team

Whether it’s law enforcement, fire and rescue, emergency medical services, public works, or social services, public sector organizations have one thing in common: helping and protecting the public. Public sector employees must be able to be productive and communicate effectively, securely and quickly, from any location, at any time, in all types of situations. And many public sector workers do their jobs in dangerous, hazardous, or time-critical situations.

This is why many public sector organizations rely so heavily on mobile devices, and why most opt for rugged devices that can withstand extreme heat, vibration, drops, moisture and other hazards. And since these organizations work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year on their mobile devices, having rugged mobile devices purpose-built for longevity is critical.

 

Law enforcement mobile technology needs

Law enforcement officers rely heavily on rugged smartphones, tablets, and notebooks. According to a recent survey from PoliceMag.com, law enforcement professionals consider ruggedness and the ability to endure harsh environments the most important feature for mobile devices. Law enforcement professionals routinely use rugged devices both inside their vehicles—usually mounted in a dock—and by hand. Mounted rugged units allow officers to access criminal databases, issue citations, and interact with computer-aided dispatch systems, while handheld units provide secure connectivity and functionality for security and crowd control.

First responder mobile technology needs

Fire and rescue teams rely on water- and dust-resistant units with outdoor-viewable touchscreens to access and capture information, communicate situational information and complete inspections. Like law enforcement, fire and rescue teams need mountable, shock- and vibration-resistant 2 in 1 laptop devices that are detachable for handheld use, or they need separate rugged mobile tablet or handheld units.

And EMS crews never know what situations they will encounter when arriving at the scene of an accident or disaster. Rugged mobile devices with integrated antennae modules and shock-mounted hard drives that can withstand vibrations and shocks help ensure that they will be able to reach dispatch and access and communicate critical patient data with medical facilities. Spill-resistant devices that can be regularly sanitized with disinfectant wipes also help ensure that bodily fluids don’t disrupt operation of the units.

Other public sector mobility needs

While law enforcement, fire and rescue, and EMS organizations may be the most obvious users of rugged mobile devices, other public services agencies can also benefit from rugged capabilities:

Code enforcement, property appraisers, and public works: Code Enforcement departments and their staff are out daily in the community at job sites, in homes, or at commercial buildings doing inspections and appraisals using work orders, recording results, and updating records.  Public works employees do everything from trimming trees, plowing snow, cleaning public spaces and patching roads, often in inclement weather. By outfitting these staff members or public works employees with rugged mobile devices, productivity, safety and delivery of public services can drastically improve.

Transportation departments/fleet maintenance: Whether it’s keeping a fleet of city trucks or county air patrol helicopters maintained, fleet maintenance can be difficult and dirty work. With sealed, rugged mobile devices that repel nearly everything from liquid to grease and can withstand drops, however, fleet maintenance workers can accurately track vehicle maintenance, order parts, and update schedules in real-time to improve efficiency.

In addition to needing rugged devices with the ability to withstand the elements, public sector organizations have something else in common—the need to keep costs in line. Return on Investment (ROI) is particularly important for public sector organizations, which are accountable to the public for what they spend. That’s another reason why so many public sector organizations have turned to rugged mobile devices; they tend to be much more durable—and longer lasting—than standard mobile devices. Research from IDC backs this up; according to a recent report, organizations can achieve ROI for rugged notebooks within two years and for rugged tablets and smartphones after one year.

Read case studies of how Panasonic Toughbook rugged mobility solutions have helped public safety teams provide critical services in their communities and cities.  

The Internet of Vehicles

the-internet-of-vehicles

The Internet of Vehicles

3 minutes

As innovation accelerates, it isn’t hard to imagine a world where cars drive themselves, or even fly. But cars that talk and think? You might be shaking your head, but that’s exactly where mobility is headed.

At ITS World Congress that starts in mid-September in Copenhagen, Panasonic’s Jarrett Wendt will offer ideas on the connected vehicle ecosystem enabling cars to communicate with each other and the road around them. If your travels don’t include Denmark in September, here are a few highlights.

The world is changing at hyper speed

As anyone in the tech world understands, disruption is the new normal. Constant innovation is now the price of entry, and the rate of change is increasing exponentially. Adoption rates have also accelerated dramatically. As inventor and futurist and Ray Kurzweil noted, we won’t experience 100 years of progress in this century – at today’s accelerated pace, it will be more like 20,000 years worth.

In our recent “Moving Forward,” research series, Panasonic Corp. of North America assesses how senior technology decision makers in industries including automotive view the technologies they see driving us forward, and the impact of these technologies on future plans. By 2025, 10 disruptive technologies are expected to generate trillions of dollars of economic impact. Our new research reveals that tech decision makers in automotive, avionics industries and related government agencies say their companies have already adopted five of these technologies on average. And four have risen to the top of their innovation agendas – energy storage, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence and sustainable energy. Panasonic is deeply engaged in all of them.

The future of transportation is integrated

There has been a great deal of prototyping and testing of Intelligent Transportation Systems, but working with the Colorado Dept. of Transportation, Panasonic has developed a phased approach that will allow DOTs to effectively deploy these technologies at scale. Not just a system for main highways and thoroughfares, but for all roadways and arteries throughout an entire state or region.

Our role? A technology-agnostic strategic consultant, general contractor and solution integrator.

We’re one year into our real-world deployment along a particularly challenging 90 mile stretch of I-70 in Colorado, connecting Denver to Vail, where Coloradans face steep grades, severe curves, often-extreme weather, visibility and congestion difficulties. This is a 5-year, $72 million V2X program featuring a road-operator managed data platform deployed on active, open roadways.

Data has the power to drive safety

With our Intelligent Transportation solution, we’re talking about empowering DOTs with the ability to analyze everything from speed and heading, to windshield wiper and traction control status – providing valuable context on road conditions.

Suddenly, a roadway operator can receive this data and make up-to-the-minute decisions about deploying snowplows during winter storms – or optimize how traffic flows through the city in real time.

This technology can also communicate instantly about emergency braking and crashes, and enables customized alerts to be sent to cars in specific locations instantaneously.

Imagine driving along the highway in the mountains and a crash occurs 1,000 feet down the road and around a blind turn. V2X will enable our vehicles to warn us or even react on our behalf – to prevent us from becoming a part of the incident even before the compromised vehicle is visible. And emergency services can be deployed more expeditiously, and more cost-effectively, than ever before.

Talking cars can reduce traffic

Connected vehicle technology will save lives through a significant reduction in the number of non-impaired crashes – estimates are as high as 80%. CDOT estimates as much as a 400% increase in roadway efficiency with wide scale deployment of connected vehicle technology – without the expense of widening roadways and adding lanes. The system is also expected to reduce the amount of time people spend in traffic and lessen the environmental impact of idling cars by mitigating congestion.

Read more about how disruptive technology is impacting transportation in The Year of the Smart Highway.

Authors
Tom Gebhardt - Chairman and CEO, Panasonic Corporation of North America

Building a wireless future that is far-reaching and accessible

Future of Bluetooth Mesh Networks

Building a wireless future that is far-reaching and accessible

4 minutes

The most inspiring example of the power of mesh networks, a distributed communication system, where each device acts as a node that can relay data to the others, lies in the island of Puerto Rico. That’s where a couple of volunteers with antennas, wireless mesh devices and solar panels helped to restore communications for relief effort coordinators in Barranquitas, a city battered by Hurricane Maria. “Within three days, volunteers were using both technologies to more effectively coordinate the delivery of food and medicine,” according to an article in Quartz.

Disaster management and public safety is one reason for the strong growth forecast for the global wireless mesh network market, but not the only one, according to a new report by Zion Market Research. Its study finds that the global wireless mesh network market was valued at $3.84 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach around $9.08 billion by 2024. The oil & gas Industry, video streaming and surveillance, smart mobility and smart city applications are among the biggest drivers of growth of mesh networking thanks to its promise of low-cost access to broadband services.

Bluetooth 5.0 was officially deployed in 2016 with a focus on enhancing the range, speed and data capacity for the connections. It also had another promising role: IoT connectivity. Where Bluetooth had previously been thought of as a 1-to-1 connection between devices, this concentration on IoT tech allows for the connection of multiple devices and, ultimately, the cloud.

Recent research on disruptive technology by Panasonic shows that many companies have adopted mobile devices, apps and commerce and the cloud, and three in five have adopted the Internet of Things (IoT). Senior tech decision makers believe these technologies are critical to their future success, according to our research. Clearly developments, such as mesh networking, that yield fruitful deployments of disruptive technology are important to these decision makers.

Wide-ranging applications

Bluetooth mesh network represents a major step towards a more accessible and wide-ranging wireless future. It allows for multiple devices to connect to the same network and all communicate seamlessly and in real time. A standard Bluetooth network is similar to a speaker presenting to an audience. The speaker may address the entire audience or individual members and audience members may address a question to the speaker, but audience members don’t communicate among themselves. In a Bluetooth mesh network audience members may address one another. This topology has two advantages. First, since a single message may travel along many routes to its destination, this dramatically increases the probability that the message arrives. The second advantage is the increased distance a message may travel – like one audience member speaking to another.

While standard Bluetooth recently upgraded its range in the Bluetooth 5.0 update, mesh networking hypothetically allows for infinite range if the proper chain links are in place.

Mesh networks in healthcare

There are pioneering Bluetooth mesh network examples in healthcare. Hospitals are using Bluetooth beacons to monitor and track equipment. But helping nurses locate equipment is just the surface of Bluetooth’s capabilities in the health system. Using this tech, doctors and nurses could monitor patients from anywhere, significantly reducing the need for hospital visits. These visits are both costly and potentially dangerous due to the risk of things like contagious diseases and infection. Not only would a doctor or nurse be able to monitor patients wirelessly, but a patient’s devices at home could do things like monitor temperature through biometric sensors and automatically notify the drug store to deliver medicine if the patient got a fever.

Benefits to manufacturing

There are also clear benefits from the Bluetooth mesh network in the manufacturing sector, especially where multiple machines operate simultaneously on the plant floor. Previously, if two devices situated beyond the range of a Bluetooth device needed to communicate, it would require either a wired connection or gateway that could connect to the cloud. This cloud connection requires Wi-Fi, which uses significantly more energy. Now with the mesh network, every single device in the entire factory can connect to each other via Bluetooth, and even the ones farthest away can communicate if necessary by bouncing the signal through other devices on the way.

Bluetooth mesh networking is just one piece of the wireless future that is to come. Read more in our Future of Wireless Everything series. 

Authors
Jeff Howell - President of Panasonic Industrial Devices Sales Company of America