Issue link: https://securitytechnologyexecutive.epubxp.com/i/618378
November/December 2015 • SECURITY TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVE 17 www.SecurityInfoWatch.com This project partnered with KUHT-TV to use Hous- ton's full-power public broadcast television station including its licensed spectrum, transmitter, and tower and existing metropolitan coverage to deliver encrypted targetable data to first responders. The fact that KUHT-TV was willing to allocate a portion of their valuable broadcast spectrum and infrastructure to support public safety is one of the great lessons from this project. KUHT-T V operates at 65,000 watts from a 1,800' tall tower on the outskirts of Houston. They cover all or parts of 13 counties and well out into the Gulf of Mexico. Over 6.1 million people live within the coverage area of KUHT. They depend on multiple public safe- ty agencies and organizations in multiple jurisdic- tions to keep them safe. Replicating this coverage with other networks would take considerably more infrastructure. The station is built to withstand natural disas- ters, is monitored 24/7 by professional engineers, has backup generators, physical and IT security and other public safety grade attributes that make it an excellent partner for delivering proprietary data. The Integrated Solution On July20-24, 2015, multiple public safety users including the City of Houston, Houston PD, the University of Houston, Texas Medical Center, NRG Stadium, Metro PD and the Harris County Sheriff 's Office participated in a joint exercise to demonstrate the ability of datacasting to sup- port public safety communications in an opera- tional environment. Content management and video resources from existing service providers, including Vidsys and Haystax Digital Sandbox, were incorporated to inject content into the broadcast. In all, over a dozen organizations collaborated to test and evaluate this new capability. The focus was on improving interoperability by sharing content across multiple jurisdictions utilizing existing broadcast television spectrum. This event also how public-private partnerships can be leveraged to address growing content delivery needs. The Johns Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) oversaw the project. The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate provided funding, direc- tion and coordination. KUHT-TV agreed to provide a portion of their over-the-air broadcast spectrum for use in this exercise and will continue to make that resource available to public safety. SpectraRep installed technology to enable KUHT to deliver encrypted and targetable IP data over their broadcast televi- sion signal. Working under contract to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology (S&T;) Directorate, JHU/APL developed a set of tests designed to evaluate the technical capabili- ties in an operational environment related to public safety. As part of these tests, members of JHU/ APL, assisted by DHS and local public safety rep- resentatives observed the tests, recorded observa- tions and will publish the results in the near future. How the partners worked together During the simulated events, the City of Houston and University of Houston (UofH) successfully pushed their content over the KUHT television sig- nal to their own and multi-jurisdictional users. All content was encrypted using AES-256 encryption. Both individual users and groups of users were tar- geted, with only those targeted receiving data. City of Houston Office of Emergency Management's command and control center. SECURITY INNOVATION AWARD P L A T I N U M W I N N E R