Scottish Fire and Rescue Service

What’s the innovation challenge?

Innovation needed to secure quick alert communication resilience as some current communications bearers in operation are being reduced.

Challenge details

Scottish Fire & Rescue Service currently uses a paging system to quickly alert firefighters to operational incidents within the local community.

This paging system uses a number of communications bearers including: Airwave, the SFRS Wide Area Network (WAN), Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).

OFCOM has announced BT Openreach will be withdrawing ISDN and PSTN circuits from 2020, which means Scottish Fire and Rescue will lose half of their communications bearers. Can you solve the challenge?

Scottish Fire & Rescue Service’s challenge is being funded by the CAN DO Innovation Challenge Fund and will be administered through Innovate UK’s Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI). The SBRI initiative provides successful companies with up to 100% funding for R&D costs and the ability to retain and exploit intellectual property developed.

The launch date of this challenge is 4 February 2019 and the registration deadline is 27 March 2019. If you’re interested in hearing about the innovation challenge and the SBRI application process there will be a briefing event on 7 March 2019 in Hamilton.