TeamAware: Profile-Based Interoperability Framework for First Responders

Many different Command and Control (C2) systems and sensor systems take part in first responder emergency operations. In order to manage these operations effectively and achieve powerful situational awareness, it is essential for C2 and sensor systems to cooperate and exchange timely available, reliable and intelligible information. Although globally accepted standards are used commonly in C2 and sensor domains, there is no single specification of using these standards together for the cooperation of disparate heterogeneous systems, which results in a crucial interoperability challenge. To address this challenge, profiling is a practical approach to achieve seamless interoperability in first responder operations. In this paper, profiling based reference architecture is described to address the interoperability challenge among C2 and sensor systems, and present six identified profiles to be used by organizations in first responder emergency management activities.