Jay Clemens
Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory has developed a new technology for first responders to gather information during crisis with the use of public television station frequencies.
APL said Monday it created the datacasting tool for the Department of Homeland Security‘s first responder group with the goal to transmit video and other data across a wide area.
“Datacasting gives first responders the same broad access to data that we are all used to having on our smartphones,†said John Contestabile, APL’s datacasting program manager.
“The broadcasting agency can precisely target who gets the information, and even retains control over it after it’s been sent,” he said.
A team of engineers and researchers from APL’s asymmetric operations sector collaborated with SpectraRep in 2015 to install, plan and execute datacasting pilot research in Chicago and Houston.
APL said Cuong Luu, DHS’ science and technology program manager, wants to carry out another pilot study in 2016 to test the capabilities of datacasting tools.
