PAGE CONTENTS
Objectives
SAGA capitalizes on previous studies in the frame of Public Safety satellite communication capability to assess the potential interest of a future programme, in line with the 6th Space Council and the ESDP expectations.
The objective is to synthesize the end-users’ requirements in order to provide a clear view of the most promising solutions to answer to these needs. The feasibility and key challenges associated to each solution will be deeply analysed from both a technical and non-technical point of view. And finally, the actions necessary to be undertaken to ensure its feasibility will be identified in a roadmap.
In order to fully address the necessity and feasibility of a future satellite communication programme for Public Safety and Security, SAGA will focus on a large set of issues from technical to programmatic, political and business challenges.
The objectives are as follows:
- To present a synthetic and clear assessment of the users’ communication requirements, validated by the end-users themselves,
- To identify the most promising solutions to fulfil the potential gap identified and to derive a list of trade-off criteria to evaluate the added-value, advantages and drawback of each solution. Based on these criteria, a down-selection should be performed,
- To identify the key stakeholders and their willingness to play a role in a potential future programme,
- To identify programmatic issues,
- To present a critical view on the concept of operations, governance and services provisioning schemes that can be envisaged for the future,
- To synthesize the technical and programmatic outcomes and to present a roadmap.
SAGA’s scope is represented in the following figure, including the interoperability with terrestrial segment.
Challenges
Several key issues are addressed by the project.
The first challenge is to rationalize and synthesize all the work done in previous studies towards the usage of SATCOM for PS&S. The second key aspect of the project is related to the fact that the success of a potential future communication programme is not only driven by technical considerations, but also (and perhaps even more) by organisational and programmatic issues.
Finally, SAGA’s purpose is to raise a commitment to the selected options – whatever it will be – involving all the stakeholders from institutional organisations and from industry.
Plan
The activity is divided in three steps.
- Task 1 synthesizes previous work to provide an updated state of the art of Public Safety communication means and needs. It will be concluded by an end-user Workshop.
- Task 2 provides a high level description of the most promising solutions and an overview of the non-technical issues (programmatic, political and organisational). Trade-off selection will be performed, submitted and validated during a second Workshop. The attendance will comprise of key stakeholders.
- Task 3 focuses on the selected solution(s) to provide a detailed definition of concept of operations, governance and service provisioning schemes. Key actions and programmatic elements will be identified in a roadmap.
Current Status
The first task of the project is now completed and has provided the consortium with a comprehensive understanding of the communication needs of Public Safety forces. This understanding is based on the analysis of lessons learned of previous events and on a systematic analysis of past projects.
The outcomes of the analysis have been submitted to a relatively large audience of end-users, for validation and complements. This first Workshop was held at the end of January 2012, in Roma (Italy) involving the participation of the fire brigade, Civil Protection, NGOs, Italian Red Cross and military forces.
Compared to the existing capabilities used in today’s operations, this requirements assessment has allowed to identify the main gaps.
The second task is now completed and candidate satellite missions that would provide added value to fulfil these gaps have been identified and submitted to an audience of first responders’ representatives at the end of May 2012.
The last part of the project will be now focused on the detailed definition of the selected option. This option is composed of:
- Short term solution based on existing L-band and Ka-band commercial assets combined to improved procurement schemes to deal with PS&S specificities,
- Longer term solution based on the adoption of the short term solution and on complementary dedicated assets in both S-band and Ka-band. PPP models will be envisaged for such future programmes.