Forest fires, search and rescue operations and disaster recovery in the event of natural disasters like flooding, earthquakes or hurricanes, means fire and rescue services have to deploy very quickly, and often over very large geographic areas in difficult terrain. This can pose a real problem in terms of achieving adequate radio coverage.
An RD965 DMR repeater could be deployed with one user to extend coverage for portable radio users in small to medium fires. For wider scale fires, where the terrain and area to be covered create communication blackspots, a series of man-portable E-pack ad hoc digital wireless repeaters could be deployed on some firefighting personnel. The E-packs are self-configuring and automatically connect to form a mesh network to allow seamless communications across the area.
Forest fires are very unpredictable and can potentially put the personnel fighting them in danger. Should the E-pack user or DMR radio user get into any difficulty, both the E-pack and the DMR portables have emergency panic buttons that can send a call to other users identifying the user and their GPS location if outdoors.
Search and rescue operations often cover large areas of inhospitable landscape such as mountains. Once again, either vehicle-mounted repeaters or man-portable E-packs provide an easy way to provide mobile communications, so search parties spread out across a wide area can keep in touch and coordinate their search efforts.
Natural disasters like flooding, earthquakes and hurricanes require disaster recovery personnel to be deployed as quickly as possible. But these events often damage permanent communications networks, so fast deployable mobile networks are required. Again, vehicle-mounted repeaters with retractable antenna masts and potentially satellite backhaul can be deployed. Or, again E-packs can be used to provide ad hoc wireless mesh networks for fire and rescue teams deployed to help find, save and if necessary, evacuate people and livestock.
