Frequentis and Hexagon Safety & Infrastructure Selected for Nationwide Integrated Command Centers in Austria (Project ELKOS)

 

Frequentis and Hexagon Safety & Infrastructure have been selected to supply mission-critical technologies for the “ELKOS Austria” project, a nationwide, unified command and communication system. The companies will also support the refurbishment of the current control and command system at the warning center in Lower Austria.

 

Over the next few years, a central command and communication system for the federal police will be implemented for all of Austria, with the Federal Ministry of the Interior acting as contracting entity. The implementation will also support the fire brigades in Lower Austria, for which the Lower Austria State Administration acts as contracting party.

 

ELKOS is a crucial element for streamlining the incident management processes for public safety personnel in Austria. It provides the federal police and its nationwide control centers with the necessary technical foundation to ensure safe, reliable and efficient cooperation between different agencies and enable nationwide sharing of information. The joint project supports the Lower Austrian fire brigades (Feuerwehr Niederösterreich) in modernizing its alarm infrastructure, Lower Austria thus being the first cooperation partner for the Ministry of the Interior.

 

The project is an important step toward a flexible, expandable and fully integrated command center infrastructure in Austria. The new infrastructure is designed to support the federal police’s business and tactical challenges and will ensure permanent sourcing and operating synergies between the federal and state administrations. With the new solution, public safety and security agencies will be able to successfully handle growing global threats – such as terror attacks.

 

The system is based on an integrated solution of the two consortium partners: Frequentis, the global leader in command center communications, and Hexagon Safety & Infrastructure, the global leader in computer-aided dispatch solutions. The Austrian Frequentis company, based in Vienna, served as leader of the consortium – successfully applying its 70 years’ experience in developing communications tools for public safety control centers. For nearly 30 years, Hexagon has been providing computer-aided dispatch systems for public safety organizations around the world.

 

The integrated solution selected for the ELKOS project is currently deployed by the three state disaster control agencies in Vienna, Styria and Vorarlberg, among many other international customers. It combines three leading products for speech communications, command and control, and incident command. The comprehensive capabilities enable police and rescue agencies to maintain reliable and efficient workflows in their daily operations as well as during major events

 

Frequentis will provide its multi-media collaboration platform 3020 LifeX. This innovative public safety solution emphasizes the investment’s future reliability for new media and technologies -- such as eCall, NG112 emergency calls (featuring GPS data, real time messaging, images and more), video data (CCTV) and LTE broadband – that can be integrated into the platform as needed. Frequentis’ CEO Hannes Bardach said, “Internationally, we have provided many command center solutions for public safety and security agencies, among them the largest police center in Europe for London’s police agency, Scotland Yard. We are excited to use our expertise in our national market in the visionary ELKOS project.”

 

Hexagon will implement its Intergraph Computer-Aided Dispatch (I/CAD) and Intergraph Planning & Response software, which will support call-taking and dispatching for day-to-day incidents, as well as planning and coordination of major incidents and events. “We are pleased to contribute to the security of the Austrian population and help improve public safety throughout the country,” said Maximilian Weber, Senior Vice President, EMEA at Hexagon Safety & Infrastructure. “The federal police, the Lower Austria State Administration, and the fire brigades in Lower Austria will benefit from systems that have been proven across Austria and around the world.”