Norwegian Museum Enhance Situational Awareness with Sepura’s Indoor Location Application

The Norwegian National Museum has deployed Sepura’s Indoor Location application on their fleet of SC21 TETRA hand held radios as part of its preparations for moving to a new building in 2021.

Currently undergoing a major relocation, the new Norwegian National Museum will be the largest museum in the Nordic countries and will house collections of historical and contemporary art, architecture and design. The national collection currently consists of over 400,000 pieces, seen annually by over 600,000 visitors.

To ensure their security and maintenance operations are successfully managed, it is critical that museum management could instantly understand where within the museum their teams are located and what tasks they might be engaged with. This information would enable smarter decisions to be made on resource management and emergency response.

Given the size and complex nature of the building, GPS data was not available and could not in any case distinguish between floor levels.

Sepura’s Indoor Location solution comprises a software application that reports the real time location of TETRA radios and smartphones relative to a network of Bluetooth beacons positioned across the museums 54,600m2 site. The radios automatically connect with Bluetooth beacons positioned around the building, sending automated location date back to the control room.

Sepura worked with Wireless Communications AS, their Norwegian sales partner, to deploy the application which gives team managers and administrators an immediate overview of the location and status of their teams. The museum staff are already using Sepura SC21 TETRA radios for their voice communications, so adding the application required no hardware changes.

Gjermund Torp, Key Account Manager for Wireless Communications AS said: “The Norwegian Museum chose the SC21 specifically for its capability to add additional functionality through its AppSPACE application environment. When they were ready to add functionality to their solution, it was a simple process to support them through the upgrade.”

Staff can now direct resources to react to medical emergencies, security risks, lone workers in distress or maintenance teams that may need additional resource.

The Museum is a dynamic environment that changes to reflect the exhibits on display. The Sepura solution is flexible to support this changing space yet powerful to provide improvements to operational efficiency and quicker reaction to emergency situations.

Gary Maughan, Regional Director for Scandinavia said: “Sepura’s Indoor Location application offers powerful additional functionality to support users whose operations are mainly indoors and may need to respond to a number of security or emergency situations. It also helps to protect staff working on their own and enables administrative staff to manage resources in the most effective way possible.”