The KGO deploys units from 30 ambulance stations, 156 fire stations, and 116 police stations, and Siemens and Frequentis were chosen to supply the associated technology. 1,200 emergency calls for the police and 550 for the fire and ambulance services: just an average working day for the three emergency services in the Oldenburg region.
“The police alone received 680 emergency calls between midnight and 6am on New Year’s Day 2013”, recalls Chief Superintendent Heiko von Deetzen. Unlike the previous year, though, the calls didn’t land at various control centers spread across the region. Instead, emergency calls to both the police (on 110) and the fire and ambulance services (on 112) were handled centrally at the Joint Regional Control Center (KGO) in Oldenburg.
The center relies on a Frequentis ICCS communication system for trouble-free digital radio and emergency call communications, and uses a Frequentis DIVOS 3 log recording solution for a complete record of all voice communications.
German Public Safety
The BOS digital radio network for public safety organizations, security services, and disaster relief organizations should cover all of Germany by the end of 2014.
Public safety and related organizations will benefit from smoother communication between organizations and between control centers and mobile units, from clearer voice transmission quality, and from cooperation across regions. However, the move from small control centers to modern facilities equipped with control centers and digital radio & emergency call systems also brings its own financial challenges for police, fire, and ambulance services.
One economical solution is to harness the power of innovation and make full use of the potential of digital technologies by pooling resources in a regional control center.
Oldenburg Joint Regional Control Center
The Oldenburg Joint Regional Control Center is one of the largest cooperative projects in Germany
The Oldenburg Joint Regional Control Center is one of the largest cooperative projects in Germany to involve local authorities and the police. Back in 2006, the Oldenburg, Ammerland, Wesermarsch, and Cloppenburg regional districts, together with the Delmenhorst and Oldenburg urban districts, established a joint, centralized control center for the Oldenburg region for the fire and ambulance services.
According to Frank Leenderts, Head of the Fire and Ambulance Service Control Center, there were various reasons behind this decision. The six existing control centers were mostly manned by just one person, and each control center had its own technology. If help was needed from a neighboring authority or from the police, the dispatcher lost valuable time with calls and inquiries.
“When different organizations needed to work together, they would have to do most of the coordination at the incident site itself,” notes Heiko von Deetzen, who heads up the Police Authority’s control center operations. He adds, “If the police received an emergency call concerning a road accident, then the fire and ambulance services would have to get their information through verbal communication rather than direct from a joint control center.”
Siemens And Frequentis Selected
One goal of the Lower Saxony Ministry of Internal Affairs and Sport is to reorganize the state’s 28 police control centers into eight regional control centers by 2015.
The Oldenburg Police Authority, responsible for 13 districts and 1.7 million inhabitants, was charged with replacing the old technology in seven separate control centers with one central system. Shortly after the six regional and urban districts had formed their joint control center, the police got in touch to discuss possible cooperation: an agreement was signed in 2007.
“We planned everything jointly, from the 2,400m² Friedhofsweg building through to the control center technology (which is the most important economic and operational factor in the project)”, recalls von Deetzen.
An ambitious project
The KGO deploys units from 30 ambulance stations, 156 fire stations, and 116 police stations
The KGO deploys units from 30 ambulance stations, 156 fire stations, and 116 police stations, and Siemens and Frequentis were chosen to supply the associated technology.
The project was an ambitious one: the contract for the control center solution was awarded in February 2011, with the intention to begin test operations in the middle of 2012 and go fully operational in the autumn of that year.
The client already had some familiarity with the quality of both the ICCS communication system and the DIVOS voice recording solution, something Frank Leenderts readily admits: “I’d worked with Frequentis solutions before. That’s how I knew this was exactly what I wanted for the KGO.”
