A PROTOTYPE system is being developed that promises to strengthen and better integrate communications systems for police and emergency services.

The University of Adelaide research project will design software and tools that will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of Australia’s emergency operations.

The project has received more than $500,000 in cash and in-kind support, including a three-year $200,000 Australian Research Council linkage grant.

Emergency communications systems are currently fragmented by different technologies, creating disconnected islands of information.

“There have been many high-profile cases like September 11 or the recent Tasmanian bushfires in 2013 where the government inquiry report highlighted the issue of multiple agencies like the Tasmania Fire Service and the Tasmania Police operating on incompatible communication channels,’’ said Hung Nguyen, research fellow with the University’s Teletraffic Research Centre.

He said there were projects in Australia and the US working to overcome the incompatibility issue. He said emergency communications now involved voice, multimedia for imaging, positioning and data communications. “

In emergency communications, often people move around and devices will get destroyed by fire, so the network needs to be very robust to disruption,’’ Dr Nguyen said. The royal commission into the 2009 Victorian bushfires found communications systems were hindered by poor coverage, lack of interoperability between emergency services agencies and insufficient investment in new technologies.

The project aims to provide techniques that allow multiple wireless technologies to communicate seamlessly using ­modern software-defined networking (SDN) solutions.

SDN allows the communications equipment to be separated from the software that controls it.

With SDN, the hardware supports an open and standardised protocol that makes integrating multiple networks easier.

Currently, SDN is not built for emergency environments where lines of communications and equipment are vulnerable and dynamic.

“What we want to do with SDN, in this case, is allow multiple wireless technologies, for example, cellular technology, WiFi technology, radio technology, to talk on an open standard,’’ Dr Nguyen said.

“We believe that by having the common interface that SDN provides we can write software that can control the network, prioritise traffic and provide a very user-friendly interface.’’

The project involves fellow University of Adelaide researcher Professor Matthew Roughan from the school of mathematical sciences and industry partner Dr Sanjeev Naguleswaran from QSPectral Systems. Dr Nguyen said the project would collaborate with emergency services organisations nationally to better understand their communications needs, including what sorts of information they need to be able to share and what devices they need to use.

“By providing them with more up-to-date, useful information we hope to make their operations a lot easier and that will result in saved lives and properties,’’ he said.

He said the research would also complement the Victorian Information Network for Emergencies (VINE) project to build a platform that aimed to enable the sharing of relevant information in an emergency.