REACT Team 6006 is continuing the development of its Live Situational Awareness platform with a new communications integration: Zello push-to-talk audio directly within the REACT Live environment.
The addition represents an important step in the evolution of the platform.
Situational awareness is not simply about seeing information on a map. During an incident, information has to move between people. Someone observes a problem, communicates it, another operator interprets it, and that information may then contribute to the wider operational picture.
By bringing communications and situational awareness closer together, Team 6006 is working toward a system in which operators can not only see what is happening, but communicate about what is happening from the same environment.
From Monitoring to Communication
The REACT Live platform already brings together several sources of information relevant to situational awareness, including weather, seismic activity, incident information, public reports, aircraft activity and other operational data.
Zello adds another layer: live voice communication.
Zello operates as a network-based push-to-talk communications platform, providing radio-like group communication over Internet-connected devices.
Rather than requiring an operator to constantly switch between the Live map and a separate communications application, the integration allows supported Zello communications to be brought directly into the REACT situational-awareness interface.
This creates a much more natural operational workflow.
An operator can monitor developing conditions on the map while simultaneously listening to communications associated with those activities.
A Common Operating Picture
One of the persistent challenges during an incident is ensuring that everyone involved has a reasonably common understanding of what is happening.
One person may be monitoring weather information.
Another may be receiving reports from the field.
Someone else may be watching a communications channel.
Another operator may be recording incidents or coordinating resources.
Individually, each person has a piece of the picture.
A situational-awareness system becomes considerably more useful when those pieces can be brought together.
The Zello integration is another step toward creating what is often called a common operating picture: an environment where communications, location information, incident reports and external data can be viewed together rather than as completely separate systems.
Listen Directly From REACT Live
One of the first capabilities being introduced is the ability to receive supported Zello audio through the REACT Live interface.
For public users, this can provide controlled listen-only access where appropriate, allowing communications intended for public monitoring to be heard without providing transmission privileges.
For authenticated REACT members, the architecture has been designed to support additional communications capabilities based on membership status and authorization.
This distinction is deliberate.
Listening to a public communications channel and transmitting into an operational communications system are very different privileges.
REACT Live therefore treats communications access in much the same way that we treat other operational information: access should match the role and responsibility of the user.
Push-to-Talk for Authorized Members
The integration is also being developed to allow authorized members to communicate using push-to-talk directly through the web interface.
Instead of every browser connecting independently to Zello using permanent account credentials, Team 6006 uses a dedicated communications gateway between the Live platform and the Zello service.
The gateway maintains the external communications connection and distributes the relevant audio and activity to connected REACT Live users.
When transmission capability is provided to an authorized member, the browser receives only short-lived permission to perform that particular operation.
Permanent Zello credentials do not need to be exposed to each user's web browser.
This architecture provides a cleaner separation between the public-facing website, member authorization and the external communications service.
Communications With Identity
During emergency communications, knowing who is speaking can be just as important as hearing the message itself.
The integration therefore goes beyond simply streaming audio.
The REACT communications system is being designed so that activity originating from the Team 6006 platform can carry verified REACT identity information.
This creates opportunities to associate communications with authorized members and, where appropriate, with operational information such as location and activity within the situational-awareness environment.
That becomes particularly useful as the system grows.
Instead of seeing an anonymous transmission disconnected from everything else, an operational interface can eventually help answer questions such as:
Who is reporting?
Where are they?
What incident are they associated with?
What information were they looking at when the report was made?
Those relationships are where communications and situational awareness begin becoming a genuinely integrated system.
Radio-Like Communication — But Not a Replacement for Radio
There is an important distinction to make.
Zello is extremely useful, but it depends upon telecommunications infrastructure and Internet connectivity.
Traditional radio can operate without the public Internet, and direct radio communication can continue even when cellular infrastructure is unavailable.
For that reason, Team 6006 does not view Zello as a replacement for VHF, UHF, amateur radio or other resilient communications systems.
It is another communications layer.
When Internet connectivity is available, tools such as Zello provide excellent reach, accessibility and integration with modern devices.
When that infrastructure is unavailable, radio systems provide capabilities that Internet-dependent services cannot.
Good emergency communications does not require choosing one technology and declaring everything else obsolete.
It requires understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each system and building redundancy between them.
Building a Communications Hub
The longer-term importance of the Zello integration is therefore larger than adding an audio player to a website.
REACT Live is gradually becoming an environment capable of combining:
- situational-awareness data;
- incident information;
- mapping;
- member and field locations;
- public reports;
- external data feeds;
- text communications;
- voice communications; and
- traditional radio operations.
Not every one of those capabilities should always be available to every user.
Public users, members and operational personnel have different requirements and different levels of access.
The system is being developed with those distinctions in mind.
Our objective is not to create the most complicated communications system possible.
It is to create one that makes useful information easier for trained people to understand and act upon.
Old Principles, New Tools
REACT's roots are in communications and public service.
The technology used to fulfil that role has changed considerably over the decades, but the basic purpose has not.
Information must reach the right people.
Communications must remain understandable.
Operators must know how to use their equipment.
And when one communications path becomes unavailable, another should be ready.
Integrating Zello with REACT Live is one example of Team 6006 applying modern technology to those traditional principles.
Radio remains part of the system.
Internet communications become another part.
Mapping and situational-awareness systems help provide context.
The value comes from making those systems work together.
The Platform Continues to Grow
The Zello integration forms part of the continuing development of the REACT Team 6006 Live Situational Awareness platform.
As the system develops, additional communications and operational capabilities can be introduced where they provide genuine value to members and emergency communications activities.
But the principle behind the project remains simple:
See the situation. Understand the situation. Communicate the situation.
That is what situational awareness is ultimately for.
Visit the REACT Team 6006 Live Situational Awareness platform at:
REACT Team 6006
Public Service Through Communications