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Reach
Issue 7 2014
H
eadquartered in Eastleigh
and serving the county of
Hampshire on the south
coast of England, Hampshire
Fire and Rescue Service (FRS)
maintains a fleet of 243 vehicles
(76 frontline fire appliances), and
each year receives around 40,000
999/112 calls and attends some
25,000 incidents.
Hampshire FRS uses a wide
range of mobile technologies,
communications and IT in order to
access the right information to enable
the crews to respond more effectively
to all types of incidents.
The main fire appliances employed
by Hampshire FRS for command and
control at incidents are the Incident
Command Unit (ICU) and Command
Support Unit (CSU). Together with the
Major Incident Room, these form the
vital link between the Incident Command
System and Fire Control ensuring that
the teams in the field receive all the data
essential for the emergency. They are
crewed by an Incident Command Team
(ICT), trained personnel on call 24/7
to provide a safe and effective means
for managing operations at all incident
levels, including Silver and Gold.
Designed to function as a
standalone facility, the ICU vehicle
facilitates incident communications
and enables full incident command
and control in remote locations. It
can act as a multi-agency command
centre by linking directly to the Fire
HQ, as well as to police and other
emergency response organisations.
For voice and data communications,
the ICU is equipped with UHF and
Airwave TETRA emergency radios,
Airwave Firelink* mobile data terminals
(MDTs), and several software-driven
information systems connecting
multiple sites, including all 52 fire
stations, the Hampshire FRS HQ, and
16 partner organisations.
The ICU was originally fitted with
a GSM modem based on GPRS,
EDGE and 3G, and although more
than adequate for several years, the
explosion in smartphones meant
that bandwidth would become
constrained at peak traffic times, with
patchy network coverage.
“Wireless communications were not
always readily available,” said Paul
Turner, Operational Projects Manager,
Airwave’s 4GMax empo
Hampshire Fire & Rescu
with high-speed data on
