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APCO Projects
Throughout APCO, you’ll find projects dedicated to the education of our members, the safeguarding of our citizens and improved communications during emergencies. APCO has several projects focused primarily on 9-1-1 and Comm Center issues.
Project 25
A joint effort of APCO and the National Association of State Telecommunications Directors, Project 25 concerns the development of standards for digital telecommunications technology, including an objective to determine consensus standards for digital radio equipment embracing elements of interoperability, spectrum efficiency and cost economies. The project committee believed the best forum for setting these standards was a combination of the public-safety community at the local, state and federal levels and the telecommunications industry, with input from the FCC.
The project's original objective was to create a suite of standards. More than 30 standards were set with six basic interfaces, including common air interfaces (CAI), data interfaces, intersystem interfaces, network and network management interfaces, public-switched telephone network interfaces and host data interfaces. The heart and soul of the project, according to Project Director Craig Jorgensen, is the CAI, which provides the key to interoperability by addressing channel bandwidth, bit rate and access, as well as modulation methods.
Project 25 had a profound impact on the telecommunications industry, which now bases its design and development of new equipment on compliance with Project 25 standards.
APCO Project 33
Standards for Telecommunicator Training
This project was authorized in August of 1995 to explore the need for telecommunicator training standards, and to create those standards should the need appear.
View Revised Minimum Training Standards for Public Safety Communications Telecommunicators
This project was created to find ways to hasten the deployment of wireless 9-1-1 Phase II.)
Responsive Efforts To Address Integral Needs in Staffing
This project’s goal, as charged by the Executive Council, is to develop a standard to be used by communications centers for number of staff needed to perform to an expected level of service and scheduling of those staff in the most efficient manner.
LOCATE VoIP and Emerging Technology Location Delivery Challenges
This project was created to address the impact upon operational practices facing the public safety communications industry specific to voice over internet protocol and related technologies.
Project 42
The goal of Project 42 is to identify those areas where standards are needed to achieve system interoperability and create a common operating picture at all levels, horizontal and vertical. Project 42 will look at such issues as:
Identify the scope of minimum common geospatial information required to be shared to coordinate Public Safety Answering Points with emergency medical, fire, law enforcement deployed units and emergency management operations centers at the local, regional, state and federal levels.
Identify what standards are needed. This will be done by determining which elements have a commonly accepted quasi standard.
Place element sets into the APCO standards process for validation.(An example of one such set of items are map icons and embedded ‘metadata’ describing those icons. Do icons, such as vehicle or building symbols, on one map make sense to someone from another jurisdiction, are they readable, are they defined and does the information describing those icons translate across the intended user boundaries?)
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