Bogotá Modernizes Public Safety Emergency Communications Platform

With its new system, Bogotá has become a pioneer in Colombia with a comprehensive integrated system with a focus on the interoperation and coordination of the different agencies.

With the city's previous emergency system, the public safety and emergency agencies were not able to communicate with each other in real time to provide an immediate response and coordinate their efforts. Establishing communication between the agencies involved logistics that could add several minutes to response times; minutes that, in an emergency, can mean the difference between life and death.

Now, with the new Command, Control, Communications and Computing Center, almost instantly -with the touch of a button- the National Police, Fire Brigade, Office of Health Emergencies (DUES, in Spanish), Secretariat of Mobility and District Institute of Risk Management and Climate Change (IDIGER, in Spanish) are fully interconnected and can therefore respond to any type of emergency or large-scale event more quickly.

"We are proud that Bogotá has chosen the latest-generation technology from Motorola Solutions for its public safety and emergency communication platform. In addition to putting the city at the vanguard, this platform will ensure that the more than 8 million residents of Bogotá receive a quicker and more effective response to their emergencies," said Jairo Mahecha, territory director, Motorola Solutions for North Latin America ( NOLA).

At the heart of this platform is a Motorola Solutions ASTRO® 25 radio communication system based on the Project 25 (P25) international standard. This latest version of Motorola Solutions' P25 radio system has been deployed with some of the largest public safety agencies in the world.

This new radio communication system makes it possible to authenticate radios and encrypt communications, thereby preventing possible clones and keeping third parties from listening in on conversations in which mission-critical information is shared. Also, because radio programming can be done automatically and remotely with this new system, communications are not interrupted.

All of the next generation radios that have been added to the system can support a GPS application. This application can be used to determine an officer's location, thus facilitating the assignment of tasks and missions in the case of an emergency or situation that requires fast action.

Since this is an evolution of the radio communications component of the 1 2 3 emergency line, it honors past investments and uses the existing platform as a foundation for the Command, Control, Communications and Computing Center. As a result, the transition from the old system to the new one was completely seamless for the users, and did not involve any incidents that affected the operations or services that the public safety forces and emergency institutions provide the community.

More than 8,000 P25 radios from Motorola Solutions, distributed among the five agencies in the district, will be connected to the same communication network, which has enough remaining capacity for other cities to join in and benefit from the platform. This platform is the first big step towards a national vision of unified public safety and emergency communications.

The entire system will be supported by a Maintenance and Operations Center that will help improve the stability and efficiency of the operation. From there, Motorola Solutions will monitor the network constantly and in real time. This center will be operated by Motorola Solutions employees who will help ensure the operation and availability of the system.