Move in the right direction

Which way did they go?

Two location apps help you keep track of and direct your team, whether they're in vehicles or on foot.

• Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) lets the control room locate and track vehicles that have a GPS equipped mobile radio on board.
• Automatic Person Location (APL) allows the control room to track and trace individuals who are carrying GPS-enabled handheld radios.

On the right track with location apps

With AVL/APL, controllers can identify the right field response at a glance. Dispatchers can send in the right units and follow their progress throughout an operation.

For instance, say team 1 is completing a job at location C, while team 2 has just started working at location B. Team 2 still may be able to respond faster to an incident at location A than the more distant unit that's ready to roll.

Manage the AVL and APL network load

GPS and other location-based services transmit data from a radio terminal to AVL/APL applications at regular time intervals or when a unit moves a certain distance. All this signalling naturally generates traffic on the radio network.

Here are two complementary ways to manage the traffic load:

• Use the ETSI LIP standard. This approach packs the location information into short, standard text messages. That significantly decreases the AVL/APL traffic load.
• Use a centralised AVL/APL server. This server will manage the location information for all units and distribute it as needed to relevant applications. That way, two applications don't send and receive their own messages via the air interface. Instead the server deals with both, using a single send sequence.

Knowing the location of  teams and team members makes for faster responses.