While many municipalities now have their sights on Wi-Fi, it is interesting to note that what is reportedly the largest Wi-Fi/WiMAX network up and running in the country isn't found in a major sprawling city like New York, San Francisco or Philadelphia. Nor does it stretched along a high tech corridor like Silicon Valley.
The distinction goes to a number of small towns and cities in Umatilla and Morrow Counties in eastern Oregon as well as part of Benton County in the State of Washington, which all have access to a Wi-Fi/WiMAX cloud that extends across nearly 700 square miles.
These aren't the sort of places where one would naturally expect to find cutting-edge broadband Internet access. In fact, Morrow County doesn't have a single traffic light.
Yet for the last year now, police, fire and emergency medical personnel in Hermiston, Boardman, Lexington, Heppner and other cities in the area have been using the Wi-Fi network to communicate complex information between offices and the field.
In Hermiston, for instance, the city's 23 police officers not only file their reports from anywhere in the six and a half square miles of the city, but can also access both local and state databases over the Wi-Fi network. "We believe we are saving about 2000 man-hours a year by going mobile," said Hermiston chief of police, Dan Coulombe. "Now we can access every aspect of our report writing and our records management system -- booking photos, past history, any cases that you want to read -- from anywhere in the city and beyond."
"This is one instance where the small municipalities that really don't seem to grow as fast as others can seize hold of the concept of working smarter, not harder," he added. "In this era of diminishing budgets, buying technology to replace thousands of hours of time is just a good call."
As well as the Wi-Fi network which provides secure access, meeting even federal standards and sufficient bandwidth to handle video, they have just installed a records management system from Sunridge Systems that Coulombe says is the most user friendly he has come across in the 25 years of police service.
But the sophistication doesn't stop there. Hermiston also has a traffic management system with 12 cameras located at key intersections. Controlled from any police laptop anywhere in the city, these can pan and zoom. "This office can expedite the flow of traffic by altering the light patterns," Coulombe explained. "I actually have a contract with the Oregon Department of Transportation that gives us the authority to do this, the first one I've ever heard of ever."
The city is now in the process of installing 59 variable message boards, like the amber alert boards, which also can be controlled by any police computer on the Wi-Fi network. And they have started tests for deployment of other video surveillance systems that also will be Wi-Fi accessible.
Real Homeland Security Issues
One key reason why public safety officials in Hermiston and surrounding towns are so far ahead in harnessing the potential of Wi-Fi has a lot to do with what lies six and a half miles west of Hermiston -- one of the nation's largest stockpiles of Cold War-era chemical weapons, 7 and a half million pounds of deadly gases and nerve agents. Federal homeland security guidelines required local officials to devise an emergency evacuation plan for the accidental release of these chemicals.
The region-wide Wi-Fi network was funded in part with a grant from the Department of Defense as part of the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program.
The traffic management system and an integrated
communication system between all of the different police, fire and emergency response personnel is designed to facilitate evacuation, emergency medical response and anything else needed in the event of an accidental release of these chemical weapons. "Preparing for any emergency with the chemical depot -- that's where this all came from and why there is such integration within agencies in the area," said Coulombe.
But as well, he credits the speed of deployment to the people involved. "The only way this was possible is because all the partners got together and worked on it," he said. "I think a key reason why it is successful here is because we don't have the levels of bureaucracy that other places have."
Leading With Vision
Coulombe also credits a local engineer and businessman, Fred Ziari, as the visionary behind the project. Ziari is CEO of Hermiston- based EZ Wireless LLC, the company that has actually built the Wi-Fi/WiMAX network.
"What makes our approach different from other Wi-Fi efforts is that our focus has been on identifying solutions and applications that allow government agencies to gain real efficiencies," Ziari explained. "That way, the money saved as a result of those efficiencies allows the system to pay for itself."
"As such, we have worked with 35 different local, state and federal agencies where we identified how they could gain immediate efficiencies by use of Wi-Fi/WiMAX," he added. "So right from the start, we focused on uses. In addition to Wi-Fi and WiMAX, we identified hardware, and software solutions that compliment our network. And we made sure the network was extremely secure to meet the highest level of federal standards. In my opinion, the result is about as close to as interoperable system as you can get in today's communication environment because all you need is a laptop that has Internet Explorer."
But beyond public safety, Ziari believes that Wi-Fi is important to these communities in general for economic development and other reasons. "From our perspective, we wanted to develop applications that would gain in efficiencies and thereby pay for the network," he said. "That meant building a very secure network for public safety and first responders where adequate bandwidth could always be maintained through software controls. But the extra bandwidth left over could then be used by the rest of the community at a very reduced cost or for free. So all the community could also benefit."
EZ Wireless is now seeking to assist other municipalities to implement Wi-Fi projects. "One way we help communities and municipalities is to get them focused on applications that will give them an immediate return on investments -- enough to pay for the system as well as reducing some of their pain," Ziari said. "If you focus on that, then the other part of it comes naturally -- providing Wi-Fi that will also benefit the community generally."
"We believe that most people see Wi-Fi and WiMAX as an evolution, where as we see it as a revolution in technology," he said.
To assist other municipalities, Ziari has developed a needs assessment to identify how Wi-Fi could reduce costs so that the savings would pay for deployment and also provide Wi-Fi service to their communities generally. "That's what everybody needs at this point -- broadband connectivity everywhere," he added.
