First responders frequently encounter situations where an incident scene could be either potentially toxic, like an industrial accident, or physically dangerous, like a collapsed building or crumbling hillside. In these instances, the job still needs to get done, despite any personal risk—because lives could hang in the balance. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is facilitating important R&D specifically for these situations, providing solutions that will allow responders to send unmanned vehicles in first to assess the environments, help chart the best path forward, and deliver lifesaving supplies and communications to survivors.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is launching a new prize competition to advance incident command dashboard technologies that would allow for real-time tracking of assets, personnel and objects of interest during emergency scenarios.

Tech Mahindra collaborated with Anritsu to launch an Internet of Things (IoT) Experience Lab. Located in Tech Mahindra’s Fremont, California, facility, the lab will provide efficient testing of 5G devices used in emerging IoT use cases.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) selected L3Harris Technologies to deliver artificial intelligence (AI) services to improve intelligence gathering and collaboration across the defense and intelligence communities.

The First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet Authority) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched the Public Safety Immersive Test Center in Boulder, Colorado, to spur the development and deployment of technologies critical to effective public-safety response.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s (DoC) National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Advisory Committee (NAIAC) launched May 4.

Dereck Orr, the chief of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) Public Safety Communications Research Division (PSCR) looks at the research that the division has completed over the last couple of years.

Ericsson announced the opening of its Global Utilities Innovation Center at its facility in Plano, Texas. The new fully functional facility consists of a purpose-built operating lab and demo environment locations that will allow utilities to engage with Ericsson and its partners to solve real-world connectivity challenges.

With the exponential growth of the Internet of things (IoT), the world is becoming increasingly interconnected, with the prospect that most devices from domestic electronics to self-driving cars will be wirelessly connected to the network in the near future. Although massive device connectivity is great for the technological progress towards more intelligent and automated devices, it raises a number of questions and concerns towards the security aspect of the RF links, as devices become more susceptible to signal interception, eavesdropping, spoofing, unauthorized commanding and other security threats. This problem ranges from the user equipment (UE), base stations in small cells and the large core radio access network (RAN) itself.

ETSI recently released a group report, ETSI GR SAI 006, outlining the role of hardware in the security of artificial intelligence (AI).