Local Police use State-Of-The-Art Wireless, Emergency Response System Developed by Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Students
PITTSBURGH — May 11, 1994 — Police in Bellevue Borough, a suburb north of Pittsburgh, are using hand-held computers as part of an emergency dispatch system developed by Carnegie Mellon University software engineering students.
The project is the culmination of two years' work on a system to help public employees manage better in emergency situations.
The system is known as the First Responder Interactive Emergency Navigational Database, or FRIEND. One of its key components is the Apple Newton, a hand-held computer operated by a pen instead of a keyboard. Using the Newton and a wireless modem, police in the field can access a variety of databases containing information — on hazardous materials, for instance — that enable them to be more responsive in an emergency.
At the same time, the system provides dispatchers at the station with a graphical interface and the ability to make speech commands to track fire, police and public works vehicles, access maps and retrieve other important information from the same databases.
Using FRIEND, police dispatchers send information to personnel in the field via a wireless radio modem. They respond by writing or drawing directly on the Newton's screen with the pen. Their sketches and words are visualized back at the police station. Police on foot in the field not only receive information, but also can report and enter information into the database, which automatically lets subscribers know that it is being changed.
The FRIEND project is the key component of a software engineering course for undergraduate and master's degree students conceived and taught by Bernd Bruegge, assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon.
Bruegge says the course achieves several goals — to involve an industrial or government client, extract their requirements and deliver a usable system, while exploring the possibilities of wireless, mobile computing.
To aid communication between the software engineers and their client, electronic bulletin boards were set up and checked every 24 hours as students negotiated and developed the needs of the police department into a working software system.
Bellevue Police Chief Michael Bookser visited Carnegie Mellon several times to review system prototypes and provide feedback on its design.
Bruegge believes in a systems-first approach to software engineering education and has been asked to write a textbook on the subject.
"Ninety-five percent of software engineering students enter the workforce with no industrial experience except for summer jobs," he says. "We want to teach real systems development to students before they enter industry."
To do this, he believes the educational process should be turned upside down.
"Today students are learning algorithms and structures in a vacuum or toy environment. We do the small problems, but that's not what industry needs. We need to teach students to build and understand systems and then plug in the algorithms," he says.
Bellevue's Bookser says the FRIEND system has a good interface and is easy to teach to public employees whose educations may not have passed the 10th grade level. Some employees may have completed their schooling as much as 30 years ago, he says, and some may be intimidated by computers.
"I believe the FRIEND system will improve the quality of service provided by emergency service personnel," says Bookser.
The FRIEND project is funded with grants from Hewlett-Packard Corp., the National Science Foundation's Division of Undergraduate Education and the university's Information Networking Institute's Wireless Research Initiative.
CONTACT:
Anne Watzman of Carnegie Mellon, 412-268-3830, or 412-268-2900