EENA NG112 Technical Committee

EENA NG112 Technical Committee is chaired by Hannes Tschofenig (Chair of IETF-ECRIT) and vice-chaired by Roger Hixson (NENA Technical Issues Director).

 Read more about the aims and functionning of EENA NG112 Technical Committee (1424KB)

To join the EENA NG112 Technical Committee, please contact either Gary Machado at gm@eena.org or Hannes Tschofenig at Hannes.Tschofenig@gmx.net

Summoning police, the fire department or an ambulance in emergencies is one of the fundamental and most-valued functions of the telephone. As telephone functionality moves from circuit-switched telephony to Internet Protocol telephony, its users rightfully expect that this core functionality will continue to work at least as well as it has for the legacy technology.  New devices and services are being made available that could be used to make a request for help, which are not traditional telephones, and users are increasingly expecting them to be used to place emergency calls.

As the number of Voice over IP enabled devices increases various stakeholders (telecom operators, independent VoIP providers, PSAP operators, device manufacturers, VoIP equipment manufacturers, etc.) have started to implement and deploy parts of the VoIP emergency services architecture. The standardization community has over the last few years published a number of specifications whereby these standards often focus on specific environments. Groups in different countries, typically lead by the PSAP operator community, have now started to investigate on how to integrate VoIP emergency calls into their existing infrastructure. As an example, the activities provided by the Network Interoperability Consultative Committee (NICC) in the UK fit into this scheme. There, the NENA i2 architecture has been profiled to allow VoIP-based emergency calls to enter the legacy emergency services network.

In a longer-term the emergency services networks will also upgrade their equipment to IP-based technologies and will then be able to take advantage of additional features provided by IP, including Internet multi-media capabilities. According to available analysis, mostly conducted in the US, cost savings are going to be a side-effect of the final transition to IP.

The US is probably the most advanced country with respect to their work on IP emergency services, thanks to the work done by members of the National Emergency Number Association (NENA). On a high-level, the work in NENA produced (in the technical area) the i2 (updated by i2.5) and the i3 specifications whereby the differences are largely based on the assumptions being made about the capabilities of the infrastructure available to the PSAP operator. For i2, the PSAP operator receives emergency calls via the PSTN and for i3 the PSAP operator operators an IP-based emergency services network.

The European situation is somewhat different as the emergency infrastructure in the different member countries does not show a harmonized structure. Technically, available standards are still applicable to these environments but require different profiling, i.e. different deployment modes.

When re-using existing standards one possible approach is to cluster countries based on their existing emergency services network architecture. As a starting point, the i3 specifications developed by NENA will be utilized mainly for two important reasons:
• A lot of work has been spent on the i3 specifications and they are therefore quite advanced already. The i3 architecture has successfully been prototyped by the US DoT NG9-1-1 project.
• NENA members were able to design an architecture that reuses other standards as much as possible. This avoids redundant work and creates the foundations for high-quality specifications.

The initial work in the technical committee will be spent with the evaluation of the requirements for next generation emergency services followed by architectural investigations towards a profiled IP-based emergency services architecture. The envisioned timeframe for completion of (a) a requirements document, and (b) an architecture document is by the end of 2009. This includes considering the different deployment considerations each country. To meet this ambiguous timeframe it is suggested to involve experts from NENA who provide further background about their work and make the latest versions of their documents available. Additionally, the experience gained by the NICC in the UK will be leveraged.

It is crucial for the success of the EENA NG112 technical committee to involve as many technical experts within Europe as possible. The membership policy for this technical group is intentially created in a liberal and open fashion. Membership is targeted at the individual level rather than on a company level.

The mode of working in the technical group is mainly via phone conferences, mailing lists and document sharing. No face-to-face meetings are planned at the moment. Depending on the progress of the requirements and architecture work further targeted working group activities will be started.

Several activities on how to support IP-based emergency calls towards legacy PSAPs are being undertaken. To avoid highly customized solutions within each European member state,  the proposal is being brought forward to start a technical group within EENA to synchronize various activities by considering the country-specific circumstances regarding their current emergency infrastructure. A forum with experts in technical and operational matters (particularly with involvement from the emergency services community) that offers room for discussions on IP-based emergency systems will help Europe to move closer to the high-quality 1-1-2 vision.