In seeking to encourage the next generation of first-responder communications technologies, Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) has announced the funding via grant of 33 R&D projects. As part of the Public Safety Innovation Acceleration Program, and originally intended to be worth $30 million, the total grants disbursed were expanded to $38.5 million, based on the review of the submitted research proposals. Observed PSCR Division Chief Dereck Orr to IWCE’s Urgent Communications, “We just got that many good applications. We got 162 [applications], which far exceeded our expectations—I think we were thinking about 100. We got so many more than we expected, so many of them were really unique and compelling, and we have the money, so we took advantage of the opportunity and funded the ones we thought were compelling.”
Based on the organization’s goals, funded projects were expected to address the following technology areas:
- Mission Critical Voice, supporting the shift from conventional radio to cellular systems
- Location Based Services, supporting the development of positioning, navigation and mapping
- Public Safety Analytics, allowing for increasingly rapid processing of higher volumes of data
- Research and Prototyping Platforms, creating tools to allow for inexpensive testing and development
- Resilient Systems, ensuing robustness in systems expected to operate under adverse conditions.
A complete list of funded projects is available via the link.
Source: http://urgentcomm.com/nistpscr/pscr-awards-385-million-public-safety-communications-research-grants
