Smart Radios and Collaborative Public Safety Communications

Smart radios should play a pivotal role in addressing difficult organizational behavior issues which frustrate the migration of public safety communications toward extensive interorganizational collaboration. This paper frames how nontechnical hazards - such as mutual distrust, cultural frictions, inexperience in cooperative settings, and policy obstacles - present significant challenges to public safety cooperation. We further explain the collaborative advantage to be gained by migration toward cooperative, federated network architecture. Finally, we emphasize how smart radio technologies could facilitate trust building and control mechanisms in inter-organizational relationships, resulting over time in increased confidence in cooperation. Accordingly, we advance a perspective which bolsters the case for extending advanced military smart radio research into the development of public safety and homeland security advanced communications architectures.